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Continue reading →: Working with Evoke Aircraft Design — A Builder’s Guide Airplane Paint Scheme DesignTL;DR: Designing your airplane’s paint scheme is one of the most rewarding parts of the build — and working with a professional studio like Evoke Aircraft Design brings structure, expertise, and precision to the process. In this post, I walk through how the process works, from defining a vision and…
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Continue reading →: Builder Log: Wings Completed and Empennage StartedIt’s been a week since my last visit to Torrance, and the team has been busy! The fuselage and firewall-forward areas are really starting to look like a finished airplane. There are now more oil and cooling hoses snaking their way around the Rotax 916iS, and much of the plumbing…
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Continue reading →: Garmin Pilot: Where Are the ODPs?I was planning an IFR cross-country from Paine Field (KPAE) to Ellensburg (KELN). This is a trip I’ve flown before, threading across the Cascades into central Washington, but this time I wanted to plan it in Garmin Pilot instead of ForeFlight. Why? Because I recently made the switch. And because…
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Continue reading →: Builder Log: WingsSince my last visit, the Torrance team kept humming along on the engine and cockpit structure. The brake lines are now tucked neatly under the floor skins, pushrods stretch aft to the tail, and more hoses snake their way around the engine bay. It’s the kind of quiet, behind-the-scenes progress…
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Continue reading →: Choosing the Right Aircraft Battery: Lead-Acid vs. Lithium ComparedTL;DR: Lead-acid batteries remain the low-cost, proven option: heavy, short-lived, and maintenance-prone, but simple and predictable. Lithium (LiFePO₄) batteries bring major advantages — lighter weight, stronger starts, stable voltage, and longer lifespan — at the price of higher upfront cost and reliance on electronics. The choice comes down to whether…
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Continue reading →: Goodbye ForeFlight, Hello Garmin PilotTL;DR: I’m moving from ForeFlight to Garmin Pilot because it offers a cleaner, more ergonomic UI, genuinely rethought instrument charts (SmartCharts), better pricing without locking safety features behind the top tier, seamless Garmin avionics integration with valuable EIS data, and a company trajectory that feels focused on development rather than…
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Continue reading →: Builder Log: Lots of PlumbingIt’s been a week since my last build session in Torrance, and while the progress might not look as dramatic this time, a lot of detailed work took place—especially in the fuselage and firewall-forward area. Think of it as less “big leaps” and more “careful choreography.” During the week in…
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Continue reading →: Sling TSi Checklist for Garmin PilotI’ve just finished transcribing the latest Sling TSi POH revision 3.2 (2023-12-13) into Garmin Pilot. If you fly a Sling TSi and use Garmin Pilot on your mobile device, you can now drop the file straight into your app and have the full checklist at your fingertips. You probably will…
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Continue reading →: Airmaster It Is: The Propeller Decision for My Sling TSiAfter much deliberation (and a fair bit of back-and-forth with both spreadsheets and forum threads), I’ve decided to move forward with the Airmaster AP431HCTF constant speed propeller for my Sling TSi. I already walked through the technical debate in detail in an earlier post, but here’s the short version of…
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Continue reading →: Builder Log: Builder LightFirst week at the Airplane Factory: complete. Walking into the factory on Monday morning felt a little surreal—this airplane I’ve been dreaming about wasn’t just an idea on a blog anymore, it was there, sitting in a hangar with its landing gear already bolted on and its fuselage gleaming in…
Eating an elephant one bite at a time.
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Slingology - Building and Flying a Sling TSi 