Sling Pilots Forum

Hi Everyone!

Waiting for my empennage kit to get here in a few months and looking at purchasing the next kit so I'm not waiting when finished with empennage.
For the people who built from flat, about how long did each kit take in hours? No need to be exact just looking to gather some numbers and estimate. Ultimately just looking at spacing the purchases without having to wait in between.

Also, looking for what others have done as far as order of the build. Emp, wing, fuse....or emp, fuse, wing...
Experience from your build if you would do it different or why you choose one option over another.

Thanks!!

I can't tell you exactly how many hours, but I can tell you that from the flat kit first arrival to first flight for me was 3 years to the month.

We just recently had a question asked about build order, but it's pretty common to do the emp, wings, fuselage and forward. If this is your first build that probably is the best order because the emp first because they are easy and you'll be building skills as you move to the more complex. Having completed the build the emp and wings are easy to do (IMHO). When you get the fuselage, canopy, FWF you get increasingly complex in the build as things start to tie together.

As far as ordering and receiving parts. Much of that is going to have to do with the time to delivery on some parts. It's good to stay in touch with Sling to make sure you have a good bead on deliverable timelines so you can order ahead of time. It's better to have the parts on site waiting on you than you be waiting on the parts. With that being said of course, there is always things you can be working on at any given time unless you've run completely out of parts and you're just waiting on that "one thing". I know at several times throughout my build process I had probably five different sections going while I was waiting on a part here and there.

If you have the funds its better to order well in advance rather than waiting to buy things until the last minute.

Thank you Brian for your response!

I have watched all of your First Rivet youtube build videos and honestly help me better understand the process and I took away things to think about. Thank you for taking the time to do it!

I'm only done with the empennage and I can't tell you how long it took in hours but it took muuuch longer in calendar time than I expected. Not because it's a lot of work, but because of all the questions, missing tools, do-overs, and then just life getting in the way. If you know exactly what to do and put in 40h weeks building, you can probably do it in a week. It's taken me more like 6 months. But if you also have other things going on and aren't exactly sure what to do, it expands the time enormously. I need to get down and focus or this will take a decade...

Thank you lutorm! I have stocked up on all the tools that is recommended and have a bunch of other tools already, but I can imagine there will always be something else I need.

I'm on 745 hours so far and have, other than for filling rivets, completed the empennage, wings and have the fuselage to about 80% complete (undercarriage in, canopy on, upholstery 95% complete, some firewall forward done). This is broken down as follows (rounding off so it won't reconcile exactly):

Rudder 26
Elevator 19
Horizontal stabilizer 19
Vertical stabiliser 40 (don't recall what caused this to take so long)
Wings 143
Flaps 61
Ailerons 11
Canopy 35
Upholstery 31
Fuselage 335
Avionics to date 4
Firewall forward to date 16

I have made some custom modifications, needed to redo bits and pieces and so on - so some of these times are skewed. Mods add a lot of time, some of which I didn't record e.g. doing the research first. Worth highlighting that I did not alodine but did primer, which added nearly 110 hours to the build. Of the 745 hours, just over 20 hours was spent doing parts inventories, 200 hours cleaning and deburring, and about 270 hours of riveting. These times aren't exact but I do try to keep a rough log every build day so it's reasonably close - and makes for interesting reading now! Into year 3 of the build - life getting in the way, managing cashflow for engine and avionics purchase, lead times for parts and kits (I bought piecemeal) etc. etc.

Also worth adding that I got the factory to build the fuel tanks for me, including the long-range tanks (saved a lot of time and effort, but was pricey) and install the canopy / door windows (ditto).

Details on We Build Planes if you're interested.

Thanks gaking, this is exactly the kind of breakdown I was looking for!
I will definitely check out your log on 'We Build Planes' site, I was planning on using EAA builders log, but this looks interesting and may use this!

How often are you able to build?

It varies. I try to spend weekends working on it, but at the moment it’s small stuff since I’m waiting for avionics and engine so I can’t do too much. I’m building in my garage which makes it a lot easier to spend time on it whenever I can.