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

When the production prototype Sling , ZU-TAF was flown around the world during 2009 at take-off and landing she was loaded to 965kg, some 365kg above the maximum all up weight applicable to the light sport aircraft category for which she was designed. Yet she proved herself again and again, performing consistently well at that

James’ laptop got busted, but they managed to get a few photos through to us of Prague and the airshow at Friedrichshafen. They will be leaving from Zurich in Switzerland today on a commercial flight and head back to South Africa via Dubai.

We’ve been in Radom for a couple of days checking out our prospective distributor (Solaris Group Aviation and Wind Sp z o.o.’s) premises and negotiating terms of distributorship (within quite a bit of food and drink in between, including what turned into a profoundly disabling vodka drinking session for me). Luckily I got in a

Yooohooo, we’re in Krakow, we’re alive and there’s good food and beer! Even better, Krakow is absolutely beautiful, full of history and, being a university town, is full of students. If you have a Sling, it’s well worth the flight! Getting away from Mitilini proved a little more of a task than we’d planned. Once

Getting out of Egypt was as we expected – a bit of a nightmare. One bit of advice I can give everyone – do not fly a private aircraft into Sudan or Egypt. I am sure there are other countries in the world which are “small private aircraft unfriendly” but in my opinion those 2

We are now in Alexandria after landing at Borg Al Arab airport which is the local military airport. We mistakenly thought that the airport at Alexandria was closed for repairs. Luckily we are not in trouble – actually everyone is very hospitable and helpful. Now we have to mission through to get out of here