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Continue reading →: Builder Log: Painting and FinalizingThere are phases in a build where progress feels incremental — another bracket installed, another wire terminated, another subsystem checked off. And then there are phases where everything accelerates visually. This visit was that kind of week. I arrived in Torrance on 2/15/26 just after the painting process had completed.…
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Continue reading →: An Open Love Letter to EAAWith Valentine’s Day around the corner, it feels appropriate to write a different kind of post. Recent events at AOPA have sparked a great deal of discussion in the general aviation community — about leadership, transparency, and connection to members. Watching that unfold made something very clear to me: alignment…
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Continue reading →: Crowdsourcing Service Bulletins: How SlingologyMX Enables Community-Driven Experimental MaintenanceMX availability update Update (April 2026): MX is no longer publicly available. I continue to use it privately and actively expand its capabilities, and it may become public again in the future. If you’re interested, the project is available on GitHub—feel free to download it and host it yourself. Service…
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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 FlyingMX availability update Update (April 2026): MX is no longer publicly available. I continue to use it privately and actively expand its capabilities, and it may become public again in the future. If you’re interested, the project is available on GitHub—feel free to download it and host it yourself. Slingology…
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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 BuildersMX availability update Update (April 2026): MX is no longer publicly available. I continue to use it privately and actively expand its capabilities, and it may become public again in the future. If you’re interested, the project is available on GitHub—feel free to download it and host it yourself. Owning…
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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…
Eating an elephant one bite at a time.
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