Sling Pilots Forum

With so many "Gotchas" with the KAI for the TSI, I wounder how many builders get things wrong and either never find out or they do once it is very hard to correct?
Is TAF doing something about this? I mean, interim change advisories or alerts? besides the new TSI Documentation promised for later this year.

TAF, are you guys following this Forum? If so, care to comment?

Many thanks!

A

Read this post with interest - rivet reference point in particular. I recently completed Ailerons, Flaps and Empennage and had quite a few KAI markups - including specifically this "confusing" interchangeability point. I sent a markup to TAF but not sure how long they will take to react.

That got me thinking, and perhaps others would like to comment, should we have a KAI markup section to this community? Then we could keep a "live markup" of the KAI pages which, although not official, would help others on their build journey? I am happy to share my markups.

Thanks for everyone posting stuff so far - everything is helpful. I have been reading through the April 2, 2020 Empennage build manual, and seemingly there are no changes that address these "gotchas". Still have the wrong number of countersunk holes on the rudder tip and still say to do 8 rivets on Step 5 of the VS. Not sure why they are not making the corrections.

I sent the factory a mail to bring their attention to this thread asking them when they'll address the things we have started to collect in this thread for updated build instructions.

I do know that some of their technical staff is occasionally browsing the forum here, but I'll keep you posted if I hear back from them.

PhilipRueker wrote: ↑Fri Apr 17, 2020 11:17 am I sent the factory a mail to bring their attention to this thread asking them when they'll address the things we have started to collect in this thread for updated build instructions.

I do know that some of their technical staff is occasionally browsing the forum here, but I'll keep you posted if I hear back from them.

The factory attention to things like this is a direct reflection on the level of customer support I expect to receive, if I decide to build and own a Sling airplane.

Many potential builders are watching The Airplane Factory to see how prompt they attend to customer concerns.

I've split out this discussion topic from the actual thread, so that that thread stays organized with just the details of the gotchas for builders and we can keep the discussion on improving the process here.

PhilipRueker wrote: ↑Fri Apr 17, 2020 2:09 pm I've split out this discussion topic from the actual thread, so that that thread stays organized with just the details of the gotchas for builders and we can keep the discussion on improving the process here.

Good job!

Thanks for threading out this discussion - I was concerned about polluting the clear "Gotchas" page. One note: I take some hope for changes to the KAI in their somewhat arms-length relationship with the Torrance build center. I figure they are seeing the same stuff we do, so they might be in closer communications with the folks on making revisions.

I got a response from the technical team in South Africa this morning:

Thank you for all the information that has been gathered with known issues on the Sling aircraft.

We are currently busy with updating all the construction manuals and plan was to release them in June/July this year. Unfortunately we had some delays caused by the high wing project and now the lockdown.
We are looking at releasing them towards the end of this year.

So let's keep collecting the information in our central thread (as well as telling the factory as most of us have done throughout the build) and stay tuned for updated instructions by the end of the year.

PhilipRueker wrote: ↑Sun Apr 19, 2020 3:09 pm I got a response from the technical team in South Africa this morning:

Thank you for all the information that has been gathered with known issues on the Sling aircraft.

We are currently busy with updating all the construction manuals and plan was to release them in June/July this year. Unfortunately we had some delays caused by the high wing project and now the lockdown.
We are looking at releasing them towards the end of this year.

So let's keep collecting the information in our central thread (as well as telling the factory as most of us have done throughout the build) and stay tuned for updated instructions by the end of the year.

Distracted seems to be the right word. The product (Tsi) is successful so on to other things!....

Meanwhile, there are builders with lot of great info that have not been incorporated into a new build file or disseminated as an addendum in a timely fashion. I have worked on airline manuals in my past doing changes over several documents. This should have been easy.

Thank heaven for great blogs.