I've already had many of you ask how our Open Hangar Day activities went, so here's my "official summary report" along with some photos.Above is Ulis Temos with his STOL CH 701 which he flew in from Pennsylvannia, with Rotax expert Dean Vogal (squatting).

We started the activities on Friday afternoon following our monthly hands-on "rudder assembly workshop" class and a hotdog & soda lunch (compliments of AmZac Light Sport Aviation, a new builder assistance center located here in Mexico, MO).
As in past years, we invited various suppliers to show their products and to educate builders on how to properly use and install them. The seminars on Friday afternoon included the following:

• Painting Your Homebuilt, presented by Mike Loehle
• ULPower engines, presented by US distributor Gus Warren
• Garmin G3X glass cockpit, presented by Tim Casey from Garmin
• Rotax engines, presented by Lockwood's Dean Vogal
• Inspecting & Preflighting your Zenith, presented by Mat Heintz and Gus Warren
• Jabiru Engines, presented by Mark Stauffer.

The seminars were well attended and it seems that interest was high in all topics. Charlie Becker from EAA was missed but he was unable to attend due to a family emergency.
We had a great time later that evening at the Zenith Builders Banquet, with more than 150 in attendance:

I'm the yellow blur in the above photo. I had the privilege of announcing the door prize winners. There were many great prizes from Loehle Paints, FlightCrafters, Aircraft Spruce & Specialty, Composite Design's Power Panel, HomebuiltHelp.com, the Zenair Newsletter, Wicks Aircraft, and the grand prize of a super-cool Garmin Aera touchscreen GPS MFD.
Below is the annual group photo in front of the factory. We had a hard time bringing all the airplanes in together because of ramp construction work going on by the factory (see photos below), making it difficult to move the planes in for the photo.

See my 2010 Open Hangar Day photo album for more pics. Russell Lepre of FlightCrafters took some nice panoramic photos:

Above are Mike Schlichtman's (left) and Al Stuber's STOL CH 750 aircraft.
The hands-on workshop in the factory was again very popular with visitors, as they "built" their own three-ring all-aluminum binders, blind riveted together:

We had a great event with an excellent turnout and good weather. I think we all had fun and visitors learned a lot. I certainly enjoyed meeting with existing builders, as well as meeting new builders for the first time. While I was hoping that more planes would have flown in (and I always do!), we still had a good show of Zeniths flying in and were lucky to have nice weather on both Friday and Saturday (and the following day it poured more than four inches of rain!).
I want to thank all who participated at this year's event. I'm already looking forward to next year's 20th annual Open Hangar Day and Builder Fly-In Gathering at our factory!