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Continue reading →: When Vinyl Meets Heat: A Sling TSi Brake Line FailureA Sling TSi owner traces a brake fluid leak back to a known weakness in the stock vinyl brake lines — and finds a pattern of owners with the same failure, a cheap PTFE fix, and an open question for Sling.
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Continue reading →: Garmin AXIS: Should I Upgrade a Panel That’s Already New?Most avionics upgrade stories start the same way: something in the panel is old, parts support is thinning, and a new box solves a real problem. That’s not this story. Roci’s panel is brand new — dual G3X Touch displays, a Garmin GTN 650Xi doing the navigating, a GFC 507…
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Continue reading →: Archer Aviator: A Pilot’s Beta Review of AI Radio TranscriptionTL;DR: I’ve been beta testing Archer Aviator — a first-of-its-kind app that transcribes ATC radio calls in real time, entirely on-device, using GPS and ADS-B to add context most transcription tools can’t. It’s built by Archer Aviation, the eVTOL company behind the Midnight air taxi, not a traditional avionics shop.…
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Continue reading →: Cockpit Refresher: Flying VNAV Descents — GTN 650 + GFC 500VNAV means something different depending on which Garmin box is doing the drawing. G3X Touch on its own only manages one waypoint at a time — cross it, reset. The GTN runs what Garmin calls Enhanced Descent VNAV: a single continuous path drawn through every altitude constraint in your flight…
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Continue reading →: Is a 360 Turn for Spacing in the Pattern Legal? What the Pattern Sheriff Got WrongDownwind for 29 at KAWO, abeam the numbers, about to start down. Everyone in the pattern was using 29 — the wind made that the obvious call. But KAWO’s other runway, 34, is the only one here with an instrument approach, and someone was shooting practice approaches on it with…
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Continue reading →: AirVenture 26: MOSAIC, Rotax, and a Sunrise Over the CascadesSometime in November 25, months before Roci’s build was even complete, I booked a dorm room at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh campus and paid for the week pass. Oshkosh dorm bookings open early and go fast, and if you wait until you’re sure you’re going, you’re not going. So…
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Continue reading →: Dual ADAHRS vs. G5: A Reliability Analysis for the Garmin G3XTwo of the same sensor isn’t redundancy. A failure mode analysis of dual GSU 25 vs. GSU 25 + G5 in the Garmin G3X ecosystem — including what happens to the autopilot, and what the brand-new AXIS launch tells us about how Garmin itself architects redundancy.
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Continue reading →: MOGAS vs. 100LL, Revisited: A Season of Flying LaterA season of real cross-country hours changed my thinking on MOGAS vs. 100LL — including one detail about my own engine I got flatly wrong the first time.
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Continue reading →: The First Sample: Engine Oil Analysis for the Rotax 916 iSOil analysis is one of the most underused condition monitoring tools in the experimental world. Here’s what it is, how it works on the Rotax 916 iS specifically, and how to start doing it correctly.
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Continue reading →: The Last Form: The Repairman Certificate, ExplainedAfter years of building, the final piece of paper is a five-minute formality — but the certificate it produces is the most misunderstood document in homebuilding. Here’s what the experimental aircraft builder repairman certificate actually grants, the FARs behind it, and what the FAA application process looks like.
Eating an elephant one bite at a time.
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