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First flight at Zenith Aircraft

By Janice Wood · July 14, 2011 ·

We just received a note from Zenith Aircraft’s Sebastien Heintz: “Yesterday afternoon we had the chance to fly our new Zenith CH650 B kit airplane with the brand new 130-hp ULPower engine. We’re very pleased with the results after just a few hours! Next we’ll be fine tuning the firewall-forward package and the fiberglass cowl, as well as adding cool and bold new striping to the airframe in time for AirVenture. We’ll report on the performance, characteristics and figures shortly.

The ULPower 350iS is a new generation light-aircraft powerplant that is a direct drive, air cooled four cylinder engine with full FADEC control (electronic ignition, fuel injection, etc.) which is lighter and much more efficient than other engines in its class, Heintz says. “On the instrument panel, we’re using Dynon’s SkyView glass panel display system,” he adds.

Details on the plane can be found here, while details on the engine can be found here. Watch the video of the first flight here.

About Janice Wood

Janice Wood is editor of General Aviation News.

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