Building a Sling TSi

In the past week we have flown the airplane for 25 hours and it is going great! It is a wonderful aircraft, very comfortable, and easy to control. After the first flight we both did some landing practice with Jean D'assonville before a solo flight, followed by many hours of maneuvers and pattern work. We need to complete a total of 40 hours of test flights are French Valley (F70) and fix any outstanding issues before we can fly it home. Issues to be Resolved The plane has a Aithre Carbon Monoxide sensor in the panel. Unfortunately this sensor keeps reporting higher than normal CO levels. It could either be a small exhaust leak, or a faulty sensor. This obviously needs to be addressed. The fuel gauges were initially fine, but after a few flights they both got stuck on "full". That needs to be fixed before we continue. During test flights we have been using the remaining fuel calculation of the G3X instead. During cruise you need some right rudder input to maintain level fl...

Today we complete the first test flights in French Valley. Everything went well, although we had to abort the first take off due to a faulty airspeed indicator (the G5 was not hooked up to the pitot system). There were a few other issues, but Jean and Jonathan were able to resolve them quickly.  Beautifly views of lake Skinner. more later...

Today we reached a milestone, our airplane is being transported from Torrance ( KTOA ) to French Valley ( F70 ), where it will get its airworthiness inspection, first test flight, and subsequent 40 hours of flight testing. After 8 months of construction it is finally ready to take to the sky. Following  Advisory Circular 90-89 we need to fly the plane for 40 hours at an uncongested airport over sparsely populated areas with lots of landing opportunities. The plane was assembled at The Airplane Factory at Torrance airport, which is smack in the middle of Los Angeles near the harbor, and therefore it has to go on one last road trip to French Valley. French Valley is a smaller airport with a 6000x75' runway in a much less densely populated area. Certification, test flight, flight testing, and bug fixing will take a few weeks, but we hope to fly the plane home after that is completed. We'll keep you posted. ... and it arrived safely!

 

 Getting ready to go through the first run-up it’s quite interesting. It feels like a gazillion number of details are still unresolved. And it is, most of the time, not just perception, it is a very real daunting collection of  open items! A few pictures showing some of the last details: installing lights, checking pushrods/cables/tension. Filling with fluids, priming lines, looking for leaks.