Airventure 2024

[ToddJohnson]

July will be here before you know it. Anyone planning on flying to Airventure 2024? Will the Airplane Factory be hosting a dinner gathering for owners like last year?

[STGove]

We are going, but not flying. Still building. We will be there M-F.

[wiseguy59]

We'll be driving out to Oshkosh, and will be there all week. I'm pretty sure that they'll have the Sling Ding once again, it's a great opportunity to get a lot of builders together.

[ibgarrett]

I'm in the final stages of my push to get things done. The DAR will be here on Saturday (please let me have done everything correctly), and then I probably have around a week or so to clean up any loose ends. Hopefully the first flight shortly thereafter. I'm planning on doing the EAA Test cards for my flight time to be complete. There's around 18 to 19 stages starting with zero and 1 - one being the fuel flow test before the DAR inspection. So I'll have around 18 stages to go.

I'm not painting the plane until Feb when my slot is open, so I'm coming into Oshkosh this year naked!... well - the plane is that is....

[ToddJohnson]

I'm in the final stages of my push to get things done. The DAR will be here on Saturday (please let me have done everything correctly), and then I probably have around a week or so to clean up any loose ends. Hopefully the first flight shortly thereafter. I'm planning on doing the EAA Test cards for my flight time to be complete. There's around 18 to 19 stages starting with zero and 1 - one being the fuel flow test before the DAR inspection. So I'll have around 18 stages to go.

I'm not painting the plane until Feb when my slot is open, so I'm coming into Oshkosh this year naked!... well - the plane is that is....

How did the inspection go?
Have you finished your test cards?
What day are you flying in?

[ibgarrett]

Hi Todd,

Thanks for the nudge. I am not on here as much as I used to be.

Inspection quite frankly was the most expensive, uhm, "joke" I've paid for recently. For $900, the DAR was there for 20 minutes tops. He wrote down the serial number on the prop and engine, had me get in the plane to demonstrate the flaps. ailerons, elevator and rudder. Then the lights and autopilot were checked. That was it. He didn't look inside any inspection panels and I don't really recall if he walked entirely around the airplane. I'll give him a bit of a pass as he just had a heart attack about 4 days earlier. He's probably mid-80's. He has done one other SlingTsi inspection, but still... I don't even think the DPE's are making more per hour.

I'm still working through the test cards. I'm not sure about some of the exact things I need to do, so I've got another Tsi builder helping me out through this process. I've also encountered a few squawks which end the test early so I can head back and address things. Such as an aileron being slightly out of adjustment, I missed the ground to the Lane A side of the FWF box and I had an EGT probe work off of the exhaust which vented onto the cooling line and about ate through it which required a replacement.

Due to the delays and work around it I didn't fly into Oshkosh this year. I really need to get a solid two or three hours of trouble free flying before I would have been comfortable in flying x-country to Osh.

Definitely next year.

[wiseguy59]

Brian,
Your DAR experience just reinforces what my Technical Adviser always says to me: 'You're not building an airplane, you're building documentation for an airplane'. He's told me plenty of instances where people made it to the final phases, but the hangups were in the documentation, not the aircraft. Glad to see you're moving ahead. I'm a little surprised about the $900 inspection fee though, but everything else has gone sky high, so why not inspections? Keep us informed, it's a good motivator. I'm shooting for March/April of next year for my Sling 2, but we'll see.

[lutorm]

Exactly, my impression is that the real job of the DAR is not to ensure you built a safe airplane, but that what you built is a legal airplane. It's all about compliance, then you have the 40h phase one to prove to yourself that what you built is also safe to fly. I don't think there are any rules for how an amateur built airplane must be constructed in the USA. This is a major freedom compared to amateur building in most other countries.