About getting the additional fuel into the wings. Jean did consider climbing out on to the wing and we’ve discussed the idea a couple of times. But ultimately he figured it’d be easier to put it through the two transfer pumps under the pilot’s seat. It did mean removing and re-attaching some pipes in flight, but that was all part of the fun. Luckily Jean’s agile enough to get himself around the cabin and into some quite creative positions in order to do running repairs. On the last leg he tried to fix the satellite transponder antenna, which is outside the canopy, from inside the canopy, but more about that and the fuel transfer process in a later post. One more thing – when I get a moment I want to write a bit about the Sling 4’s performance. Flying to Phuket and 5 hours in, 8 hours endurance remaining, we climbed from 12 500 to 13 500 feet (15 500 feet density altitude) at 350 fpm to avoid weather. I realised that the Sling 4 at 115 hp way outperforms a Cessna 182. More about that later!
