I just got back from a week at First Light Aviation Group in Livermore, California with Rick Lindstrom & Rich Vetterli. I went down to help them with the Upgrades on their Corvair powered CH601's. We had a great time and made excellent progress on both airplanes.
Rick Lindstrom will bring his airplane up to our booth at the Arlington Fly-in this year July 7th- 11th, so feel free to stop by and see his bird and talk to us about the…
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Added by Brady McCormick on May 17, 2010 at 2:12pm —
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It was a cold and windy day... but clear and sunny, so
we flew our beloved Zodiac XL demonstrator airplane this morning.
Today's flight comes after the downtime of installing the
Zodiac XL upgrades which we've been chronicling here over the past five or six weeks. All of you that have been following this series will agree that the upgrade package kit that we…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on December 28, 2009 at 4:00pm —
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We've been finishing up the aircraft these past few days, continuing on where we
last left the project.
We've re-installed the flaps and all the controls in the aircraft, as well as reconnected all the wiring and fuel lines.
Above, Steve and Roger finished riveting the last rivets back in...…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on December 24, 2009 at 2:30pm —
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As you all know, we've been busy making the producing the parts of the Upgrade Package kit, and now we're also busy
shipping them out to builders and owners!
All the Upgrade Package kit parts and hardware shown above can be shipped in the two cardboard containers: One box (18"x12"x6", 25 lbs.) for the smaller parts and all hardware and one 6-foot long 4-inch cardboard tube (about 16 lbs.) for the longer parts. These package are…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on December 18, 2009 at 5:26pm —
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Continuing on where we
last finished, now we re-install the "upgraded" wing center spar section into the fuselage and position additional fuselage doublers:
First we installed the beefed-up Front Wing Uprights (6-ZU-2-6). This replaces the original Wing Uprights (6B13-1) with the heavy duty .125-inch Front Wing Uprights. We are forced to drill a new row of holes parallel to the original row for the new…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on December 14, 2009 at 4:00pm —
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I've now
added the photos for the last post on riveting and re-assembling the center wing spar section. Below is the upgraded center spar section, ready to return to the fuselage:
As previously mentioned, Roger Dubbert from the Zenith factory will be attending
Gus Warren's Zodiac CH 601 XL… Continue
Added by Sebastien Heintz on December 9, 2009 at 3:49pm —
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After having
positioned, drilled, and clecoed the upgrades to the center wing spar assembly, we now rivet the parts back together and bolt the two halves of the center spar assembly back together to reinstall it into the fuselage.
Here we begin to rivet the center wing spar assemblies back together using the "conventional" bucked rivets:…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on December 5, 2009 at 5:00pm —
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We already
disassembled the center spar section (a while back).
Now, we'll get to the task of installing the upgrades and reassembling the the center spar. We have posted the latest
Upgrade Drawings as they have been updated (albeit still in draft):
We position and backdrill the…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on December 4, 2009 at 6:15pm —
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Continuing where we left off yesterday, now we install the mass balance to the ailerons. Since this was mandated by the
UK LAA earlier this year for Zodiac XL owners there, we used their drawings (which was engineered and tested by the LAA), as specified in the
AMD Safety Alert.
The aileron mass balance consists of an 18-inch arm…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on December 3, 2009 at 5:30pm —
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With the main wings done, we now focus on the aileron upgrades.
The aileron upgrades consist of three separate items: Aileron gussets (65W2-5 and 65W2-6) on the aileron ribs, L-angle stiffeners for the aileron trim servo, and finally, aileron mass balance. Above, the right aileron is shown. Below is the left aileron.
Our demonstrator Zodiac CH 601 XL airplane has the original "hingeless" aileron system - many customers have the hinged…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on December 2, 2009 at 5:00pm —
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Now we're working on finishing the second (left) wing.
We debur and rivet the aileron bellcrank support channel and stiffeners, and the rear channel doubler...
And we bolt in the wing root doubler 6-ZU-1-2 and rivet the nose rib angles (6-ZU-1-3 and 6-ZU-1-5) in place...
...and we cleco and rivet the nose ribs in place. Note that in the photo we are…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on December 1, 2009 at 11:30am —
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As shown previously (in
Part 8), we had
already installed a Wing Root Doubler (6-ZU-1-2) to the front side of the spar root, but as mentioned earlier (
see my Part 13), a new Wing Root Doubler (6-ZU-1) replaces the previous doubler. This new doubler is cut…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on November 25, 2009 at 5:30pm —
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Again, I want to
thank Doug and Lori from Quality Sport Planes for organizing and hosting the free "Upgrade Workshop" this past weekend at their facility in Cloverdale, California (shown above). This was an excellent opportunity for Zodiac XL builders, owners, and pilots to learn about new upgrades, and how to install them. For more information, contact Quality Sport Planes at…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on November 23, 2009 at 5:36pm —
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Now we install
L-angle stiffeners to the rear bottom wing skins:
This is an easy job with the top rear skin removed. We trim the L-angle piece to length, pre-drill it, and then drill and cleco it into the bottom rear skin:
We'll share the position measurements and exact details with the final drawings. The Upgrade drawings are
nearly finalized (which will allow us to then release and…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on November 20, 2009 at 4:30pm —
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Here we move over to the aircraft fuselage and center spar section. Roger reviews the draft drawing 6-ZU-3.
Again, remember that the posted drawings are in DRAFT form and we are currently finalizing them...
We'll be replacing the original rear wing attach plate (6B5-4) with a heavy-duty 1/8-inch 6-ZU-3-5 Attach Plate. This is the plate that sticks out the sides of the center fuselage and that bolts to the wing's rear channel. Note that the…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on November 18, 2009 at 4:59pm —
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Picking up where we left off in our
last post, here we drill and bolt the cap spacer 6-ZU-1-6 centered between the original spar web 6W3-1 and the new wing root doubler 6-ZU-1-2:
Then we start deburring and riveting some of our Upgrade Package additions permanently into place, starting with the back of the wing, riveting the Top Rear Spar Angles and…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on November 17, 2009 at 5:30pm —
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After having
drilled out the rivets, we now cut out the original Top Spar Cap Angle (6W3-6) 1680 mm. from the inboard end to replace it with the 1/8-inch extruded angle 6-ZU-1-1, taking care not to cut into the rear upper spar cap (we leave the front upper spar doubler (cap 6W3-2) and the rear upper spar cap (6W3-2) intact):
We position and clamp the new Extrusion…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on November 14, 2009 at 10:00am —
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Since the
FAA's Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) and
AMD's Safety Alert / Directive were issued on Saturday, November 7, 2009, we've begun the job of updating our Zodiac XL demonstrator per Zenair Upgrade drawings. As the kit factory, we want to have this done as soon as possible while also…
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Added by Sebastien Heintz on November 11, 2009 at 10:30am —
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