That was my experience in my one flight in a 701: roll force was much more than pitch force. This was with the center Y stick.

Definitely not the balanced forces I see in my Bonanza.

My deputy director is a retired Colonel F-4/F-117 pilot and he was looking at getting an experimental. The Zenith team invited him up for a long weekend where he got to fly everything, practice building skills, test avionics, etc. The Zenith team really seems to support their product.

Our EAA chapter is building a CH750 Cruzer as a chapter project. While this has been happening I've been building my Glasair Sportsman in an adjacent hangar.

The Cruzer plans/instructions are, frankly, terrible. It appears there has been a total loss of configuration control in the drawing set. As an example, our aircraft came with fiberglass doors hinged upward with a piano hinge at the top of the door. We had to fuse information from drawings for four different variants of door installations to get all the data we needed to be able to frame the door opening, build the door and its latches and hang the door. I would say this cost us likely 100 person-hours of head scratching to glue together the bits and pieces of info from different drawings for different versions of the door and door frame and latch mechanism. Extremely frustrating.

This isn't a unique situation - it has been a common theme throughout the build. We've done MUCH "read, digest, plan, build, drill it all apart and start over again".

By contrast, the Glasair Sportsman drawings are MUCH better, clearly illustrated and with excellent written instructions. Many times I've had members of our Cruzer build team look at my Sportsman build manual and walk away muttering about the crappy Cruzer drawings.

The Zenith airplanes are "crude". They're pretty simple to build in terms of the level of technology required to build the airplane. They're also adaptable to a wide range of powerplants and props. They're not a bad machine overall. Just don't expect Bonanza comfort levels!

If you want to follow a current build, this guy is good. [YouTube] https://youtu.be/https://youtu.be/S0jR8KSTdMY[/YouTube]

Thank you guys for all the input. I am planning to visit the factory and see one up close.

I am very interested in the short field performance.

Going to check it out closer and see the kit quality and flight feel.

KJ

One of my best friends purchased a CH-750 powered by a Jabiru 3300 (120 HP) that had been built by someone else. He enjoyed flying it a lot, which was a good thing, because it cruised at about 90 mph. He flew another guy's CH-750 powered by a Rotax 912 ULS (100 HP), and it cruised at pretty much the same speed. He also flew one powered by a UL-Power engine that was around 135 HP (IIRC), and said it cruised maybe a couple of mph faster. The CH-750 design is "draggy" to say the least (all that lift from the wing means you've got a LOT of induced drag), and you quickly get into the "diminishing returns" area with additional horsepower. More HP does increase the rate of climb, as long as it doesn't increase gross weight much, but he felt the 100 HP Rotax 912 ULS was probably the ideal engine for the plane.

He did say that the CH-750 could be a handful in windy or turbulent conditions. It was light weight, and very responsive, with the power-off glide angle of a homesick manhole cover. (His words.) On the other hand, it could land on a dime, and take off from that same dime. He joked with our favorite tower controller that to him that our local runway was 150 feet long, and 7002' feet wide. He could literally take off directly perpendicular to our 150-ft wide runway, and demonstrated it for her at least once!

One thing that really annoyed him about his CH-750 (and a few others he flew) was the "oil canning" noise from the tail section while in flight. Apparently, it was both common, and quite unsettling for new passengers – definitely something you wanted to brief them on ahead of time! You'd be flying along, and suddenly there would be a loud "BOOM" sound from the rear of the plane... Apparently, it is caused by the large, flat surface areas between bulkheads – which are somewhat unsupported – flexing in and out if you get lazy with keeping the ball centered.

He wished the builder of his plane had built those panels with a "bead" diagonally to reinforce them without adding any weight. (I don't know if that's in the plans, or just something he thought up.) But since the original builder did not do that, he was planning to add some L-shaped diagonal "stringer" sections (sourced from Lowes aviation supply). He was going to lighten them by drilling a bunch of holes in them, then cut them to fit diagonally across the largest unsupported flat sections. They would be attached to the inside of the skin using double-sided auto-trim tape. That stuff sticks like crazy! It would have been really easy to do that during the build, but for a 6'3" guy who weighed about 230 lbs, installing those in the claustrophobic tail boom area was going to be a chore!

Sadly, he passed away unexpectedly (apparently from an aneurysm in his brain) , and never got the chance to get that modification completed. Not a day goes by that I don't think about him.

Jim:

Thank you for the info.

I have been watching some videos online and I noticed that the CH 750 planes varied from 100 hp (CH 750 STOL) to 205 hp (CH 750 Super Duty) with the cruise speed only going from 90 to 110 mph or so.

I agree that the wing design with the front cuff must make about 100 mph cruise for a wide range of horse power. So the extra power must be a waste of fuel in cruise or maybe you could just throttle back to 90 mph and get the same fuel burn.

I like the super duty for the useful load. It does appear that the CH 750 STOL with 120-130 hp is about the best balance.

The oil canning is odd, the plane is really light so it must have thin skin.

The short field capability is amazing. It appears from the videos that the 150ft ground roll is real. That is about 25% of my Cessna 205.

Below is a video showing a test pilot trying to stall/spin the CH 750 Super Duty...he just gets a 800 fpm sink rate and a spiral...having a near stall/spin proof plane would be pretty useful for a short field landing.

https://youtu.be/IMi4TTeTJuc

KJ

I'd agree. This airplane ain't going anywhere fast, regardless of horsepower (that's what a Bonanza is for )



That behavior is pretty typical of all the 7xx Zeniths. Not only is it the thin skin, but also the planes are very angular and slab sided. If the fuselage cross section had some curve to it, I doubt it would be an issue. But doing so would also complicate the construction.



That's where the extra horse power is put to use.

Another example of how rugged and easy to repair they are. This 750 hit real hard at my home airport the other day knocking the nose gear off and squatting the mains. It almost went over while scooping up sod into the induction air box.

New landing gear simply bolted on, air box straightened, minor repair to bottom cowl and one new blade and it is back flying. All with a few basic hand tools.

A very tough little airplane.

Check out the takeoff videos on the Viking engines website.

Wow. The gear does look very stout compared to the light empty weight of the airframe.

It does look extremely simple to build and repair.

KJ