I took a short hiatus from building the Sling to work on a few adjacent projects. One of my other interests is 3D printing, and given some of the parts I made recently for my plane, I decided to make a few upgrades to my 3D printer. I’m completely...

I ordered an Artex 345 ELT in December and received it in January, so I figured it was time to install it. It’s a pretty straightforward install, attached with just 4 bolts to a floor rib. For the electrical, I ran a shielded 3-conductor wire out to the ELT...

Total Hours Completed: 628 (45%) Hours to Go: 771 The end of this month will mark two years since I made the decision to purchase a Sling 4 kit plane.  I thought it would be a fitting time to start putting up a regular progress report, in additional to...

After getting the main wiring harness squared away, I turned my attention to the audio wiring harness, which carries the headset audio out to the center console. I had a general idea in mind of how I wanted to wire the jacks, but since I’m trying to finish off...

I haven’t posted in a while, but it’s not for lack of progress. I’ve been slowly working my way with wiring – more specifically, routing and securing the wiring. It’s a major pain, with areas that are hard to reach or have limited clearance. I can’t imagine doing this...

I assembled the pitch servo using a 90 degree backshell as mentioned in my last post. I have a few pictures to show what it looks like. To secure the harness over to the servo, I used a cushion clamp attached to a rivnut that I put into the...

As I was laying out the wiring to the pitch servo, I realized there is a slight issue. Can you spot the problem in the next picture? As you can see in that picture, there’s not much room between the autopilot connector and the neighboring rib, meaning the wires...

It’s a minor detail that you don’t usually see, but I like the finished look of neatly-bundled wire harnesses. While zip ties are convenient, they can damage the wire over time – under vibration, the edge of the zip tie chafes the Tefzel jacket, and eventually can cause intermittent...

In my last post I detailed my first attempt to build up the d-sub connector for the Garmin autopilot; I was using their G3X video series on YouTube for instruction. Surprisingly, the official G3X install manual recommends a process for wiring the connectors that’s quite different, but it’s much...