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The annual fly-in event is a homecoming for Zenith Aircraft customers from across the U.S., with many Zenith customers flying in to central Missouri, with their completed Zenith kit aircraft (whose parts and components were all made at the Zenith Aircraft factory in Mexico, Missouri). The Open Hangar Days & Fly-In event include two full days of activities, with educational seminars and workshops, an aircraft show, contests, social activities, as well as a Zenith banquet dinner on Friday evening. This year we’ll be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the low-wing Zenith CH600 series designs by aeronautical engineer Chris Heintz, and we’ll be showcasing our newly expanded Zenith Aircraft kit factory and hangar showroom. Factory tours (of the modern kit aircraft factory), aircraft building and flying demonstrations, and other activities are planned for all visitors.

On the first day (Friday, September 20th) educational seminars begin in the morning and take place throughout the day featuring various airframe (the aircraft fuselage, wings and tail), engine, avionics seminars, with suppliers like Dynon and Garmin avionics, Corvair and Viking auto engine conversions, and more participating. The knowledge gained from these educational seminars gives the individual aircraft kit builders an opportunity to learn more about the choices they have in building and finishing their own aircraft. Charlie Becker, EAA’s Director of Chapters & Homebuilt Community Manager, will speak about government issues affect sport aircraft owners and builders, including MOSAIC, task based phase 1 flight testing, LODA, Basic Med and fuel issues. There will be additional seminars and panel discussions on topics of interest to Zenith builders and flyers, including flight safety (transition training and first flight preparedness). Friday’s activities conclude with the popular Zenith Aircraft banquet (catered BBQ), held outdoors in front of the Zenith Aircraft factory with the planes (weather permitting), with special guest speakers and entertainment.

Saturday’s schedule is packed full of activities including:

• Ribbon-cutting ceremony (at noon) of the Zenith Aircraft factory expansion
• Tours of the newly-expanded Zenith Aircraft kit production facilities,
• Zenith aircraft “show” with many categories and prizes,
• Seminars on Zenith aircraft kit construction and maintenance,
• STOL and other flying demonstrations at the airport
• Dinner (fried chicken) and awards ceremony starting at 4:30 pm
• …Great camaraderie throughout the day with lots of hangar talk and food!

Hands-on building projects in the Zenith factory are being planned, including a “women’s only introduction to aircraft building” workshop class. There will be Zenith Aircraft presentations on aircraft kit construction, as well as representation from more than a dozen vendors of products and services for Zenith customers (avionics, engines, insurance, etc.).

The Zenith Aircraft Homecoming – Open Hangar Days and Fly-In is a popular annual event for Zenith customers and aviation enthusiasts.

The annual Zenith Aircraft Homecoming – Open Hangar Days and Fly-In event is a great way for Zenith Aircraft’s customers to meet with each other to share their love of building and flying, and to get to know the factory staff, while also learning about building, maintaining and flying their airplanes. While area hotels sell out well in advance of the event, there will also be free camping available at the Mexico airport. Further details are available on the Zenith Aircraft website, with a detailed seminar and events schedule (to be published closer to the event date): https://bit.ly/zen24-homecoming

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/share/ouKksYYUuhyK5zzx/

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One of aviation’s great pleasures is to meet up with a bunch of friends at some out-of-the-way airport and just watch airplanes, enjoy the scenery and wallow in all things aviation for a little while. This is the heart of what has been known for generations as “the fly-in.” Someone organizes the event, chooses a place and date and gets the word out on what is going to happen. Fly-ins can involve as few as two airplanes or can expand to the size of that little annual outing in Wisconsin each July. In fact, one of the big topics of discussion inside the EAA’s Homebuilt Council over the past few years is “how do we help create more widely spread out grassroots fly-ins?”

Well here’s an answer: Disorganize them! I say that tongue in cheek, of course; organization is the heart of a safe gathering of airplanes. But organization might not be as complicated as you think. In fact, I have made a practice of “disorganizing” low-effort fly-ins ever since I built my first airplane and find that I enjoy the true grassroots nature of a simple gathering more than one with catered dinners and event hotels. A few examples might illuminate.

Back when I finished my first RV, I put about 350 hours on it in the first year. Yeah, I was really enjoying it! I was down on the Texas Gulf Coast and the flying weather was good year-round. There were also quite a few other RVs in the Lone Star State and it wasn’t hard to raise a quorum by posting on the Van’s Air Force site. Just about every weekend, you could count on finding folks at one of the popular Hill Country barbecue spots or the ’50s diner in Brenham. One of the regulars, a guy from Fort Worth, was always raising the idea of a camping event—you know, throw a tent, a bedroll and a few days’ worth of food in the back and head off somewhere to camp by the plane.

He kept talking about it until one day he announced, “Petit Jean, Arkansas! It’s a state park with a runway beside it. Be there the day after Thanksgiving.” Since he was a former naval aviator, we all saluted and loaded our airplanes. I think about seven or eight airplanes showed up, and the highlight of the weekend was Friday night around the campfire when we discovered that everyone had brought too much food. So we built a nice cooking fire and shared steaks, burgers, drinks and what-not until the last survivors crawled away to their tents about 0300. The next day we hiked, explored and sat in lawn chairs around the airplanes. There was no plan—just meet at an airport with whatever you needed to survive.

That little gathering became an annual event and we weren’t the only group that discovered the place. The local boys had been doing the same thing. Eventually, they decided to bring some vehicles and a group tent and arrange lodging nearby for those who didn’t like sleeping under canvas. A recent Petit Jean fall fly-in attracted something like 150 airplanes, all because a few folks decided to get away with little planning. Grassroots at its finest.

A year or so after the first Petit Jean gathering, I looked around Texas and found a state park of our own with a runway: Lake Whitney, located a bit southwest of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Again, I just dropped a note out there saying I was going camping. Anyone who wanted to join me could find me at the southwest corner of the runway on Friday night. Sure enough, a half-dozen airplanes showed up and someone (I think he was a Swift driver) drove down from Fort Worth with a BBQ in the back of his truck. We lay under the stars and counted heavenly bodies, traded rides in each other’s airplanes and just had as good a time as we could make. Someone threw me the keys to their big-tired Super Cub clone and said, “Have fun!” So I did. He had the keys to my RV in case I screwed up.

Now that we’re living near Lake Tahoe in Nevada, we discovered a hidden gem of an airport about 30 miles away as the crow flies. Alpine County is nothing but a long paved runway in the mountains, with a paved ramp and some tie-downs. It’s there to serve firefighting aircraft when the need arises. Otherwise, it’s more or less abandoned. The nice thing is, you can camp right next to the ramp. There are no facilities, but there are clearings in the trees and fire rings built out of rocks from other visitors. Shortly after we discovered it, we put out a note on VAF that we were going to go primitive camping one October weekend. Sure enough, 10 or so airplanes appeared. Nothing was provided but a place and time—but another wonderful night was spent by the fire and we did it again and again for several years.

Probably my most special “disorganization” was something I set up after a reconnaissance flight way out to the Big Bend area in West Texas. There I discovered the Big Bend Ranch State Park. Formerly one of the largest cattle ranches in the state, it had been deeded over to the public and turned into a park that was magnificent but had trouble attracting visitors because it was so remote. Fortunately, the former ranch owner had seen fit to build a 7000-foot paved runway about half a mile from the ranch house complex, which made it a perfect location for pilots to fly in and enjoy the wilds of the west as nature intended. The place sported a bunkhouse bed for $25 a night and three meals a day in the mess hall for about $20.

All I did was put out the word that I was going to be there on a given weekend and if anyone wanted to join me, here was the number to call for reservations. That was the sum total of my efforts to put the thing together, and we attracted 10 airplanes or so. We took jeep rides through the nearby national park. We mountain-biked. We rode horses, hiked, flew around the desert enjoying the scenery—taking care to stay on the correct side of the Rio Grande—and sang songs around the campfire late into the evening while watching the stars. We got to know the “4:45 javelina” that sauntered through the compound at the exact same time every day.

And in all that swirl of activity, I met an interesting lady with an RV-6 who had flown in from Carlsbad, New Mexico, despite the fact that her radio wasn’t working­­—not that it made much difference out there in the middle of nowhere. She also was intrigued by the idea of a weekend out away from the madding crowds, with airplanes as our trusty steeds and new friends to meet around the campfire. I was really glad she came because it turned out that weekend wasn’t just a fly-in success—it was the time I met my future spouse!

You never know what you’ll find when you “disorganize” a fly-in.

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Oshkosh 2024

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If you are piloting an ultralight or light plane VFR, you really don’t need an artificial horizon or a heading indicator. But you do need airspeed and altitude, and it’d be nice to have that available in a compact, clear, modern package. Even better, you’d like to make sure everything is happy in the power barn, as well as your airspeed and altitude.

In the spirit of providing everything you need and nothing you don’t, Wapsi Aero brought a bright and affordable electronic flight instrument that has generated quite a bit of buzz at AirVenture’s ultralight field. The rectangular instrument provides graphical engine data mid screen with airspeed and altitude in legible tape readouts on each side—combining a partial EFIS with an engine monitor. The screen is bright and easily readable, even in direct sunlight. The instrument also provides Hobbs and flight timers as well as battery voltage.

Even better, the Wapsi device is designed to fit into the same hole that may currently house a GRT EIS engine monitor—of which there have to be thousands in the field. It has the same physical footprint and the exact same connectors and pinouts. Installation appears to be just that simple: If you have a GRT EIS, swap out the unit and keep all the existing sensors. Add pitot and static lines to get airspeed and altitude. The only parameter the Wapsi units don’t currently support is fuel flow, though that’s in the works.

Wapsi currently has instruments for two-cylinder, two-stroke engines ($699), two-cylinder four-stroke engines ($749) and a four-cylinder, four-stroke application ($799). All prices are less probes; the Wapsi devices can use GRT, MGL, VDO and generic thermocouple probes. More configurations are under development. For more information, visit www.wapsiaero.com.

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One moment we were in Oshkosh 2024, talking with the nice folks in the Timber Tiger booth, the next instant we glanced behind us and we were in 1932 at the Thompson Trophy races.

Why? Because Thomas Schuttoff had shown up decked out in his white Gee Bee overalls and was peering into Kay’s Speedster. The Speedster is unabashedly retro, from its Verner radial to gigantic teardrop wheel pants, and so is Thomas. Together the man and machine momentarily had us wondering if we’d fallen into Jimmy Doolittle’s pit crew.

We soon learned Thomas is more than stuffed overalls; he’s living the part at his Hildesheim, Germany home under the Aviators Farm banner.

Surrounded by a superb collection of golden era aircraft in an urbane setting, the Aviators Farm is the home of the aviation spirit says Thomas. Gentle and full of subtleties, Thomas believes the past has much to teach the future, especially his favorite barnstorming and pre-war air racing eras. To the future he offers instruction and charter operations at the Aviators Farm, a place we’d love to visit in person although www.aviators-farm.de will get you there electronically (brush up on your German first).

In the meantime, in his perfectly executed ensemble, Thomas made Air Venture just that much more fun and memorable.

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