An AirVenture 2014 Attendee Was Heard To Say The One Week Wonder Project Was The Best Thing at AirVenture This Year

On Tuesday, August 5, only 2 days after the completion of the airplane thousands of EAA members had a hand in building at AirVenture last week, the Zenith 750 Cruzer made its first flight.

With EAA’s Jeff Skiles at the controls, the Zenith CH 750 Cruzer N140WW departed Wittman Regional Airport’s Runway 9, quickly ascended to about 1,800 feet. Skiles did one circuit around the pattern, landed, and taxied to EAA’s Weeks Hangar on the north side of the runway.

“The flight was great,” Skiles said. “The Zenith Cruzer has a lot of performance, and lifts off very fast. Like a rocket ship, really.” It was Skiles first maiden flight of a new aircraft, and on the day before this flight he was thoroughly checked out in another Cruzer as well as a 750 STOL.

“I am very fortunate to have the honor of making this first flight today.” he added. Although the instruments are not calibrated, Skiles figures he reached a speed of about 85 mph during the flight.

Charlie Becker, EAA community director and homebuilt community manager, who led the program from uncrating to first flight, was finally able to exhale. “To be honest, it’s a huge sigh of relief for me,” he said. “I didn’t really see it as done until it flew. Sure we got the airworthiness certificate and taxied it at AirVenture on Sunday, but until it flies, it’s not an airplane.”

The logbook located at the One Week Wonder workshop last week shows an incredible 2,500-plus people had a hand in building this airplane. Many people who pulled a rivet also signed their names on the airframe.“I want to thank each and every one of the participants,” Becker said. “You gave the crew a lot of energy to make it happen. It’s an incredibly rewarding feeling.”

Becker notes that the project’s purpose was to show that building your own airplane is an attainable goal. You can do this! Becker added, “This airplane has touched a lot of lives and will continue to touch lives by showing it can be done.”

Sebastien Heintz, Zenith president, spent most of his time during the convention in the One Week Wonder workshop and decided to stay in Oshkosh a little longer to witness the occasion. “It came out very nicely, didn’t it?” he said. “The focus of the week was to get it done, but this is a very nice airplane.” Heintz spent most of Monday working with Skiles on transition training.

Skiles added that he was pleased to take advantage of the EAA Flight Advisor program. “I did some transition training with Zenith, and that was very valuable, but this morning it was very helpful for the EAA Flight Advisor to sort of walk me through things and let me know what to expect.”

“It was built in a week, and it is a basic airplane, but it also has a state of the art engine (Rotax 912 iS) and a touch-screen Dynon panel,” Heintz added. “Nobody builds a plane alone. There are resources out there like EAA, and everyone’s goal is to make building an airplane more common.”

The plane now awaits its paint job that about 2,500 visitors also voted on. The runaway winner was the blue on white, garnering a little over half the votes.

(Photo: Jeff Skiles and Zenith’s Roger Dubbert go over last-minute details before the flight provided by EAA and taken by Jason Toney)

FMI: www.eaa.org