Last night Jean and Chris were up until 3am fitting the canopy while the rest of the factory had their first full nights sleep in ages. As you can see she is really taking shape now. As soon as the canopy sets we will be working on the interior and then the task of installing

It’s been a mixed day. We made awesome progress last night and our machine is now ready to fly, save that we need to wait the full curing period for the bonding agent used to attach the canopy perspex to the frame. The engine is sweet and we had some anxious moments as we weighed

I’m afraid in all the excitement we’ve been a bit slack on providing proper updates over the past 48 hours. Not through lack of progress, but perhaps a little bit through frustration at the pace of it. Yesterday was a great day. We were honoured by the presence of Mr Zakhele Thwala, the Director of

On Friday afternoon I (James) flew ZU-TAE, the Airplane Factory demo aircraft, down to Durban for the Virginia Airshow over the weekend. We had 6 Slings on the field and lots of interest from the public. I was the lucky one, back here at the factory everyone was working non-stop. What a great feeling to

The Airplane Factory crew has been working nearly non-stop to get everything finalised before departure on hopefully the 20th of July. James had and interview with Radio 702 in South Africa, and we also featured on Carte Blanche on TV. Below is the podcast from the radio interview, and the video clips from the Carte

The all-nighters have started as D-day for Sling 4 ATW approaches at the speed of light. Although the prototype ATW Sling 4 won’t be making an appearance at Virginia, the Sling 4 launch at 10h00 on Tuesday 19 July is a fixed date and she’ll leave for Oshkosh the next day or as soon thereafter

It’s been a long and late weekend, especially for Jean and the composites team. But first things first – Thanks to Chalkie for volunteering the use of his and Peter Hengst’s immersion suits from their 2003 Oshkosh centenary flight for our trip. It hadn’t been hours since a friend had sent through a record of

Since last Friday the canopy blank has been fully prepared, two female canopy moulds cast, two foam canopy door frame cores routed, numerous centre fuselage components drawn, punched out and bent and re-assembly of the wings has commenced following tank seal testing. While good progress is being made across the board, all substantial projects require

The behind the spar and both leading edge fuel tanks in each wing of the Sling 4 have been pressure tested and there are no leaks. They will therefore be finally assembled into the wings over the next few days. Meanwhile, the greatest single challenge facing the team is the development of the canopy in

During the last two weeks there have been a number of changes around The Airplane Factory. While construction of Slings and Sling kits continues apace, a slightly different beast is taking shape in the northern quarter of hangar 7, directly under the watchful eyes of the company directors. Good progress is at last being made