Airworthiness Inspection passed on 8/18/2010

Last week, Doug Dugger & Woody Harris were kind enough to fly down to inspect my plane prior to the DAR inspection. Today, the DAR arrived and signed off my plane. WOW!! It's time to fly.

Finished and ready for the FAA

The upgrade is completely finished. Now I need to complete the new weight & balance and get the paperwork in to the FAA for the final inspection.

She's Home

The Zenith upgrade is done. We moved my airplane from Rick's shop back to my hanger today. I need to get the wings mounted, then start the paperwork for the FAA inspection.

It's almost done

I can see the light at the end of the upgrade tunnel. The fuselage upgrade is complete, except for the airleron control stop (which I'll do after I re-rig the torque tube). I finished the left wing today. The right wing has the forward part of the upgrade complete. I need to upgrade the rear spar, airleron bellcrank and add the stringers. The wings should be going back on next week. Then, it's up to the FAA.

Left side fuselage upgrade - complete

Three guys, two planes, one week.

Rick Lindstrom, Brady McCormick and I are spending one week trying to complete as much of the Zenith upgrade as we can on our two planes. Today we worked 12 1/2 hours and plan to do this for four more days. We made good progress today. Check out the photos on my Building Photos link.

Upgrade mania

Okay, hold on tight. Rick and I are going to do a one-week intensive upgrade session on our two planes at the same time. Brady McCormick is flying down from Washington to whip us into shape and show us some helpful tips for the upgrade.

Left wing comes off

My friend Rick Lindstrom came by today to help me remove the left wing. First I had to disconnect the aileron cables, pitot & static lines and aileron trim wiring. Then I removed the rivets from the top skin. By my count, there were over 450 rivets on the top skin that needed to be removed.

Starting the Zenith Upgrade

Well, it's official. I've started the factory required Upgrade. I removed the right wing, then removed a few hundred rivets to remove the top skins. After removing the fuel tank, I took this opportunity to clean up a few things from the original build. I removed the pvc pipe that I had installed to run the strobe wires. It was heavy and not needed. I also cleaned up the wiring for the new lcd strobes. Today I drained the fuel from the left wing and removed the nuts from the spar bolts. Tomorrow, with a little help from my friend and fellow 601 builder Rick, we'll removed the left wing.