Interior Skin Fit

On Monday I began the installation of the skins on the port side of the the fuselage. Like on the starboard side, I started with the interior skins. I found that the holes along the bottom of the skin were drilled differently than the starboard side, and supporting installing...

Garmin Goods

I purchased a few G3X components from Sling-focused supplier Midwest Panel Builders. Garmin ran a rebate promotion through the summer that I decided to take advantage of. I purchased two screens, a 10.6” GDU 460 and a 7” GDU 470, as well as a GEA 24 engine analyzer. These...

Nose Gear Work

Today I worked on the nose gear a bit as well as continuing to rivet on the fuselage side skin. A recent Kitplanes article recommended using JB Weld with rivnuts, so I did exactly that for the towbar brackets that attach to the nose gear fork. In addition, I...

Countersunk Rivet Notes

I’ve learned a few things as I tried to install countersunk rivets on my fuselage, which I’m capturing in this post. In summary, the rivets I originally started using (POP AK41H and AK51H) are not suitable for use on the fuselage, but I found an alternative part that’s readily...

Nose Wheel Valve Stem

For my first task after coming back from a week of vacation up at Lake Winnipesauke, I had to fix a problem with my nose wheel. Thanks to a tip from fellow Sling builder Rod, I found out I had not assembled the valve stem correctly. A visit to...

Instrument Panel v1

I’ve been working on a 3D model of my instrument panel. Although I’m still several months away from needing to buy avionics, there are some good rebates right now from Garmin, so I think I’m going to start buying some components, even if it means it will sit on...

Nose Gear Assembly

I assembled the fork and wheel for the nose gear. The parts went together easily. I had to clean up the threads on the top of the gear leg, I was not able to get an AN4 bolt to thread in smoothly, and didn’t want to chew out the...

Rami AV-10 Comm Antenna

Per a comment on my previous post from Peter, here’s a few pictures showing what the antenna will look like on top of the rear fuselage....

Misc Rear Fuselage Tasks

While I wait for replacement rivets for the side skins, I worked on a few miscellaneous tasks. Finished assembly of one of the front seats Installed rivets into rear fuselage skins – I purposely left it cleco’d in a ready-to-close state in case I thought of any last-minute changes...

Side Skin Rivets

EDIT 8/5/2020: the AK51H rivets identified below won’t work. See my later post regarding countersunk rivets. In my part 2 post regarding the fuselage side skin install, I noted that the TSi instructs you to use 4.0mm rivets to attach the skin in the dimpled locations, rather than 3.2mm...