I’ve been toying with the idea of building an airplane since looking at the Zenith 601 on their website in high school, before I had a driver’s license. Old Zenith Website: https://web.archive.org/web/19991009220453/http://www.zenair.com/zodiac/index.html
They had an online build log for a factory aircraft that I was following, and stopped updating at some point. Fast forward a few decades, and I finally ordered the kit.
I started flying in a Cessna 152 in college, still one of my favorite airplanes to fly, and progressed through to cabin class pressurized twins. At some point these become more traveling machines than flying machines, and I’ve wanted to get back into a fun, small aircraft. The Zenith CH750 Cruzer is a faster less slow version of their all-metal, easy to build “sky Jeep” bush plane. It trades an extremely short takeoff distance for a more reasonable cruise speed: the roll increases from about 95 ft to 300 ft, and cruise from about 95 knots to 125 knots.
It has the right combination of attributes:
- Popular, proven, and well supported design with an active builder community
- Easy to build, metal airframe
- Easy to customize without going too far outside of the design
- Excellent visibility
- Off-field, short takeoff capability (under 400 ft)
- Reasonable cruise speed (over 120 knots)
- Light controls, fun to fly
- Reasonably priced
No other kits share these attributes. Vans aircraft are great, if you want a general purpose plane and want to build it following their instructions and engine recommendation. In my case, I was looking only for an airplane for <500nm flights with fun as the focus that I could customize without becoming an engineer or test pilot.