I'm building a Zenith STOL CH 701 kit plane.
It's a two place, 100 horsepower Short Take-Off and Landing Experimental airplane.
I ordered the kit in late May.
It was shipped on Friday August 11th and was delivered to my house 17 days later on Monday August 28th at about 6 PM.
| The skeleton of the rudder. It's pretty floppy at this point. I've drilled holes, cut and filed aluminum, pulled some rivets and sprayed some zinc chromate (corrosion protection). |  Oct 2006  |
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The Rear Rudder skin, all drilled and ready to go. | |
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Once the rear skin is on, suddenly the rudder feels really solid. | |
Here's the finished rudder. Nov 26 2006 |
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I've made some progress on the front spar of the stabilizer... | |
| Here are all the stabilizer parts, drilled and deburred after a thin coat of zinc chromate. Sunday Dec 10th 9:30 AM |  |
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After the skeleton is riveted. | |
| Positioning the stabilizer skin on the upside down skeleton. Dec 10th 7 PM |  |
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After the bottom of the skin is drilled, deburred and riveted on to the skeleton, the top of the skin is positioned with ratchet straps and 2 by 4s. It's drilled and cleco'd with the straps in place. | |
| Here's the skin on... Dec 20th, 2006 | 
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| 2007 into 2008. 21 days on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon on our permit. Bought the neighbor's house and moved 100 yards. Sold the old house. Moved Rande's business. Foot injury, pinched nerve in neck... Back building again in the spring of 2008. | ||
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The Wing spars are prefabricated. The first part goes really fast, adding the nose and the rear ribs. | |
| At this point I'm building lots of parts. The rear spar is built up from a lot of parts. Take a 4 foot long "L" section and convert it into 14 short pieces. Each section of rear spar fits between the ribs. Here's a spar in a jig to set the proper length. |
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I've got a spar extension clecoed to the Wing spar, and a set of rear spar parts. |