KITPLANES July 2024

Because few new products get announced at Sun ’n Fun, there’s often a dead zone between April and the big intros at AirVenture in July. But that doesn’t mean it’s total dullsville. A couple of new bits have caught my eye recently. The first is from Aircraft Extras (www.aircraftextras.com). I suppose you might get bored opening the oil-access door and checking the dipstick before every flight—or you may have an airplane whose access requires a ladder or a hoist or perhaps a drone—but this device has some neat features beyond its most obvious: to provide an electronic read of the oil level in your engine. By inserting the Oil Quantity Sensor into the sump of your Continental or Lycoming, you can get a read on the engine oil level right from…

Many years ago, I owned a Grumman Yankee that I bought from the local FBO when they were closing up shop. I was about two years out of college, living in a one-bedroom apartment, eating 29-cent chicken pot pies and spending all of my time learning the space business. But when I had a few extra dollars, I was renting this little yellow airplane an hour at a time to build skills. It turns out I was the only person renting it and when the FBO owners (neighborhood friends of mine) decided to seek honest work and get out of the aviation business, they offered it to me for $4900—$1000 down and the rest “whenever you can afford it.” It turns out that I spent a heck of a lot…

When I started taking flying lessons in earnest a couple of years ago (my first lesson was at 14 but it took a while to have the resources and time I needed to commit), I, like so many other lovers of all things airplane, began shopping for my own bird. I quickly hit two snags: available hangar space and rapidly increasing hull values for even legacy OEM-built craft. A friend sent me information about Zenith Aircraft, the headquarters of which is practically in my backyard—about an hour’s drive through the cow pastures of mid-Missouri. But, as a newbie pilot, could I comfortably—and safely—transition from a familiar environment to something different? Is it true what the naysayers claim about homebuilts? Are they sketchy? I was intrigued by the idea of building…

Success in the Experimental world can be measured in many ways, but longevity is surely one of them. For Zenith Aircraft, 2024 is a milestone: four decades producing simple, straightforward airplanes. Chris Heintz introduced the CH 600 in 1984 as a low-cost primary trainer, well before anyone thought of Light Sport Aircraft or certainly the dead-end Primary category and, now, MOSAIC. Chris correctly saw that legacy trainers were tied to their own history, so the CH 600 broke free, with innovations everywhere you looked. The low-wing, side-by-side airplane lives on today in the CH 650 but showcased such unusual features as the all-flying rudder and pull-rivet construction. Like most kit companies of the day, Zenith searched for the right engines for its airplanes, choosing from VW-based designs, small-displacement traditional engines…

I have performed countless Lycoming compression tests in my life. While that’s what we all call them, they are more accurately referred to as cylinder leak-down tests. Simply put, the test—using a dual-pressure gauge device with a specified-size orifice in between—tells you the capability of the cylinder/piston/valve assembly to hold pressure. The better it holds pressure, the more power it will develop. The less pressure it holds, well…it will probably still run—so long as it isn’t shedding pieces—but your power output is going to be low. I used to own a J-3 Cub with some partners and we joked that on a good day, it had a three-cylinder engine, because one of the jugs was always low compression. The weak one just changed every other day. Of all those countless compression…

Lapping valves in place sounds like a daunting challenge—what if you do something to ruin your expensive engine? But like many things these days—you can watch a video to get an idea just how bad (or good) the job might be. I am not much for learning from random people on the internet who happen to have a YouTube account, but Mike Busch has a pretty good reputation with engines and has done an excellent 10-minute video that is worth the time—if nothing else, to convince you that you can (or can’t) handle what’s required.…