You can see my blog post for more details, but N19JF, a Viking powered Zenith CH-750 Cruzer with about 18 months and 968 hours of my sweat, (literally) blood and tears, as well a few hundred hours from my son Halden and friends John and Diego, is now certified airworthy!

Only 28 hours of that was actually in airplane construction, the other 940 hours was removing the @#^$&#$!@ part number stickers!

Thanks Roger for taking all the technical support calls, Chris for the design, and Sebastian for the encouragement and running a well oiled machine. And of course Patty, Katlin, Joyce, Steve and everyone else at Zenith!

Thanks also to Jan and Alyssa for all the help and advice on getting the Viking 130 ready to fly. Every time I fire it up the plane just wants to jump into the sky. Finally I can let it!

And thanks to Buzz Air for the transition training and 152 landings in some of the worst crosswinds I have every seen all with the panel blacked out. If I have any hope of finishing my first flight alive it's due to him.

I could not have done it without the support of my local EAA chapter led by James McGauhey( a fellow Zenith builder), and James Nichols for letting me split the apple fritter when I could not beat him to the donuts first, looking forward to seeing you fly your 750 STOL, and our EAA Tech Counselor David Weber. Phil Rueker was a life-saver helping be button everything up the last weekend.

Thanks also to the community for all the answered questions and support during the build.

And last but certainly not least thanks to Mark Pensenstadler for teaching me that I sometimes just need to settle for "good enough" if I ever want to actually fly a airplane I built! :-)

https://my750cruzer.wordpress.com

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Hi Jonathan. It is not what you can think of, it is what does insurance require?

STOL Transition Training - Conor Whitehead at the Pianosa Flying Farm, Carlton, WA.

Here is his post to the Zenith forum earlier this year.  

http://www.zenith.aero/forum/topics/learning-teaching-in-a-ch750-stol

Jonathan:  Congratulations! Your aircraft looks great!  Nice painting work. 

And.... I second your remark:  "Only 28 hours of that was actually in airplane construction, the other 940 hours was removing the @#^$&#$!@ part number stickers!"

(I for one would happily pay the $25-50 extra it might add to a kit to cover the cost of using a polyester -- or other printable plastic material -- barcode label with adhesive that could be easily peeled off. I'll certainly have spent more than that on all the carb cleaner I use to remove the labels!)

Will be watching for your reports from Phase I flight testing. Good luck!

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