The One Week Wonder Returns to AirVenture 2027 and the Zenith CH 750 Super Cruzer Built by the Crowd

The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) has announced that the One Week Wonder is returning to AirVenture in Oshkosh in 2027, and the airplane at the center of it this time is a Zenith CH 750 Super Cruzer. Over the seven days of the show, ordinary attendees - many of whom have never held a rivet gun - will assemble a complete, flyable airplane under the supervision of experienced builders. It is the single most effective recruiting tool the homebuilt movement has, and it’s coming back.

What Is the One Week Wonder?

The One Week Wonder is exactly what it sounds like. Across the seven days of AirVenture, walk-up attendees are handed a tool and a task and put a piece of a real airplane together. The supervision is expert, but the work is genuine: the rivets are real, the airframe is real, and by the closing days of the show, the airplane is meant to be complete and flyable.

EAA has done this before, and done it well. In 2014, the first One Week Wonder built a Zenith CH 750 Cruzer, with more than 2,500 people putting their hands on it. That airplane flew, and it became a working ambassador for the idea that an ordinary person can build an airplane.

Why This Event Matters for Pilots

On the surface this is a feel-good story - a crowd builds a plane, everybody claps. Underneath, it’s the most effective on-ramp into experimental aviation that exists.

The biggest barrier to building an airplane isn’t money, and it isn’t even time. It’s the belief that you can’t do it - that building an airplane is something reserved for people with a workshop full of tools and forty years of experience.

The One Week Wonder dismantles that belief in about ninety seconds. You walk up, someone hands you a cleco and a drill, you set a rivet, and you realize the wing in front of you is going to fly - and some of it is yours. The event isn’t really about the one airplane. It’s about the thousands of people who walk away thinking, for the first time, maybe I could do this.

Why the Zenith CH 750 Super Cruzer?

The airplane choice matters. The Zenith CH 750 Super Cruzer is a light sport, high-wing, all-metal design from the Zenith Aircraft Company of Mexico, Missouri. Zenith has built its entire reputation on one idea: airplanes that regular people can actually finish.

The 750 family uses pulled (blind) rivets - the kind you set with a hand tool - rather than the driven, bucked rivets that need two people and a lot of practice. The parts arrive match-hole drilled, meaning the holes are already there and already line up. That engineering is exactly why a crowd build works: you can hand a total stranger a tool and have them set a structural rivet correctly within their first few minutes, because most of the ways to get it wrong have already been removed.

The Super Cruzer is the cross-country oriented version - bigger fuel and set up to actually go somewhere, not just fly the pattern. It’s a genuine backcountry-capable, load-hauling light airplane, and one of the most approachable metal kits flying.

If you’ve ever stood in a kit manufacturer’s booth at a fly-in and talked yourself out of it, this is your chance to physically help build one in 2027 - no commitment, no kit invoice, just your two hands and an afternoon.

The Bigger Picture

General aviation has real problems: hangar shortages, the cost of avgas, rising kit prices, and a graying pilot population. But the answer to a shrinking pilot population isn’t another study. It’s a nineteen-year-old - or a fifty-nine-year-old - setting their first rivet and catching the bug.

The One Week Wonder is grassroots aviation doing the one thing no regulation and no subsidy can do: it changes what a person believes is possible for them.

How to Take Part

AirVenture 2027 is still a good ways out, so EAA hasn’t released every detail yet on build hours, scheduling, or exactly where the build tent will sit on the grounds. That information typically comes as the show gets closer.

If you want to be part of the build, watch the EAA announcements closely. Build slots are first come, first served, and the most sought-after tasks - the finishing work in the last days of the show - go fast.

And if 2027 feels far away, you don’t have to wait. Your local EAA chapter almost certainly has a workshop, a Young Eagles program, and at least one member with a project in the garage who would welcome an extra set of hands this weekend. That’s where most builders actually start - not at the big show, but at the little hangar down the road.

Key Takeaways

EAA’s One Week Wonder returns to AirVenture Oshkosh in 2027, building a Zenith CH 750 Super Cruzer from scratch during the seven-day show.
The 2014 original built a Zenith CH 750 Cruzer with the help of more than 2,500 attendees - and it flew.
The CH 750 Super Cruzer is a light sport, high-wing, all-metal cross-country design from Zenith Aircraft Company in Mexico, Missouri, using pulled rivets and match-hole drilled parts that make crowd-building possible.
Build slots are first come, first served; watch EAA announcements for scheduling as the show approaches.
You don’t have to wait for Oshkosh - your local EAA chapter is the most common place builders actually get started.