Experimenter is a magazine created by EAA for people who build airplanes. We will report on amateur-built aircraft as well as ultralights and other light aircraft.
Issue link: http://experimenter.epubxp.com/i/134623
T h e Z e n i t h 75 0 C r u Z e r Heintz and company are well known for favoring airfoil sections that offer high lift and excellent slow flight and gentle stall characteristics. The STOL CH 750 was built around a modified NACA 650-18 airfoil (with a fixed leading edge slat) with a fatter-thannormal thickness—17 percent. This gives lift but works against high speeds which is okay with the Heintz crew, because even in their low-wing designs, the emphasis is on safety, not high-speed capabilities. They know that a lot of homebuilders are low-time pilots, and they design aircraft that cater expressly to the needs of that pilot niche, which is one of the reasons tricycle landing gear are standard. They also are known for designing aircraft that are easy to build, and that's where the new CruZer fits nicely into the Zenith 700 series. "An important part of the STOL 750's short-field capabilities are the wing's fixed leading-edge slats," Sebastien said. "We made them fixed, which is much less complex than movable, but that produces higher drag. On the CruZer, we eliminated the slats entirely because we recognized that only about 30 percent of the CH 750s built were ever landed off airport. Yes, many are flying out of tiny backyard runways, but we know that there are far more based on normal airports. And those owners aren't interested in landing anywhere except on established runways. So, they don't need to be able to get off the ground in 100 feet, but they do want to go faster than the 100-mph cruise speed that the 750 was giving them; so airframe drag was an issue." The CruZer shares the same firewall as the STOL CH 750 and the low-wing CH 650, making a wide series of engines available to power the new design. But the CruZer has a new tail that departs from the usual Zenith single-piece vertical surface by featuring a traditional rudder/vertical stabilizer unit. Also, the horizontal stabilizer/elevator surface is symmetrical in cross section in contrast to the asymmetrical, downlifting surface on the STOL birds. Although Sebastien said that the fuselage is basically a 750 fuselage, the many modifications such as the tail and the wider, more conventional instrument panel come close to making the CruZer a new design. It still maintains the 42-inch cabin width, which makes Te CruZer shares genes with the short-feld-oriented CH 750 STOL and is perfectly happy on grass, but it cruises 18 mph faster than the STOL 750. 16 Vol.2 No.6 / June 2013