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Continue reading →: Weight & Balance: Configuring Garmin Pilot for the Sling TSi and Exploring Aft CG LimitsThis post walks through how I set up Weight & Balance for a Sling TSi in Garmin Pilot, and how I use that setup to explore realistic scenarios where aft CG can become a consideration, particularly in a parachute-equipped aircraft. A few important notes up front. First, Garmin Pilot requires…
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Continue reading →: Beyond Logbooks: How Slingology MX Now Tracks the True Cost of FlyingSlingology MX started with a very specific problem: keeping aircraft maintenance, compliance, and records coherent. Not just stored somewhere, but structured in a way that reflects how owners actually think about their airplanes—maintenance tasks, directives, counters, equipment, notifications, and the slow, relentless march of time and hours. That foundation hasn’t…
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Continue reading →: Skew-T Diagrams for Winter IFR Flying: A Practical Preflight GuideWinter IFR in the Pacific Northwest has a special talent for looking mostly fine right up until it isn’t. This is a part of the country where IMC is not an exception—it’s the baseline. Low ceilings linger for days. Moist air stacks up against terrain. Freezing levels hover just high…
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Continue reading →: How to Determine Service Bulletin Applicability for Your Aircraft Using AIAs a new aircraft owner, one of the first sobering realizations is that Service Bulletins are not optional reading—they are part of the ownership contract you didn’t explicitly sign. Before the airplane is considered complete and ready to fly, every applicable SB for installed equipment needs to be accounted for.…
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Continue reading →: A Lightweight Maintenance & Compliance Dashboard for Experimental BuildersOwning and building an experimental aircraft quietly turns you into several people at once. You’re the builder, the operator, the maintenance manager, the compliance officer, and—whether you intended it or not—the historian of the airplane. Regulations don’t care that these roles live in one human brain. They still expect clarity,…
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Continue reading →: Could a Sling TSi Ever Have Autoland? A Thought ExperimentTL;DR: Emergency Autoland has moved from impressive demos to real-world use, forcing a new question for general aviation: not whether an airplane can land itself perfectly, but how much automation is needed to avoid the worst possible outcome. This post breaks Emergency Autoland down into its fundamental requirements — deciding…
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Continue reading →: Builder Log: Ready for Paint — A Look Inside the Factory-Assist Build ProcessThis week’s visit to Torrance looked a little different from the recent ones. I wasn’t on the shop floor turning wrenches or checking off build tasks. Instead, this was a review milestone—looking at the work completed by the Airplane Factory team over the past several weeks and confirming that the…
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Continue reading →: The Hybrid Logbook: A Practical Record-Keeping Model for GA Pilots and OwnersTL;DR: Aviation records must survive for decades, but digital tools rarely do. The most resilient approach for a GA pilot with a single airplane is a hybrid model: keep paper as the master, scan everything important as a backup, and use a lightweight online dashboard for reminders, planning, and analysis.…
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Continue reading →: Garmin Pilot IFR Checklist for Real-World Flying: Quick Reference to the Rules You Need MostTL;DR: A controller’s reminder about “procedure turn confusion” led me to build a Garmin Pilot IFR Checklist — a compact, quick-reference list of acronyms and rules we all tend to forget once the checkride is behind us. It’s designed for in-flight reference inside Garmin Pilot, covering items like IM SAFE,…
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Continue reading →: From Builder to Owner: Understanding Aircraft Maintenance LogsTL;DR: Your airplane’s logbooks are more than paper—they’re proof. They certify your airworthiness, protect your wallet, and tell the story of your machine. Whether you fly a certified Cessna or a homebuilt Sling TSi, the same truth applies: if it’s not written, it didn’t happen. This post breaks down what…
Eating an elephant one bite at a time.
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Slingology - Building and Flying a Sling TSi 