Update on Richard Howell’s Sling 2

In the March 2020 Newsletter, Richard’s project was featured. He recently sent me the following: “I’ve been doing work with ailerons, flaps and, as of today, permanently mounting the main landing gear! Woohoo!“ One of his quotes: Never underestimate the amount of procrastination required to get something done.

Here is his September update:

How long until you fly it? That’s invariably the first thing I hear when someone learns that I’m building an airplane. Apparently, that’s normal. I’m hoping for some time next year. A lot depends on the yet pending decision to paint first or fly first.

Since March, the empennage has been completed, the control surfaces and flaps have been (mostly) assembled, fuel tanks have been pressure tested, both seats have been built, and the main landing gear has been bolted into its channel under the center fuselage.

The kit was ordered as a quick-build and it looks like I have an airplane in my shop. It also looks like I have an airplane in my house. Flaps and ailerons are under the bed in the guest room, surrounded by fiberglass cowling, wingtips and the completed horizontal stabilizer. The living room features an 8 ft, 4 in elevator and the master bedroom sports a vertical stabilizer and a beautiful leather-covered glare-shield instrument panel frame.

The world-wide COVID-19 lockdown kept me waiting until June for a bunch of parts that should have been delivered with the main kit, back in February. And, even the June shipment was missing a part which took another 6 weeks to get my hands on.

Once I finally had all of the airframe parts in hand, I went ahead and ordered the upholstery, firewall-forward kit, the Rotax 912iS engine and Whirlwind ground-adjustable 3-blade propeller package from the factory. There’s months of lead time. To take advantage of a Garmin rebate offer, I’ve ordered all of the avionics. My custom plug-n-play IFR panel will be done by Midwest Panel Builders, in Michigan.

The next big tasks are to get the fuselage down off of the workbench and onto the main landing gear stubs so I can have reasonable access for installation of the control sticks, rudder pedals and the control linkages. Sling 2 has push-pull rods for ailerons, elevator and nose wheel and electric motor drive through torque-tubes for the flaps. The rudder uses cables. The pitch trim is electric and there will be 2 servos for the Garmin G500 autopilot, also linked with pushrods.

I have a feeling that the firewall-forward kit is going to ship at the same time as the engine - all from Sling Aircraft in South Africa. That’s fine, but most of the firewall component placements and the various firewall pen-etrations need to happen before the engine gets mounted, so the engine may spend some weeks in its crate after it arrives.

All in all, it’s exciting for me to think about things as I move slowly forward. It’s almost indistinguishable from procrastination - but with a confident and satisfying payoff. I take whatever time I need to understand what and why. It’s all a variation of the wise old adage — measure twice, cut once.