Year: 2021

Undercarriage

Spats

Instructions are quite clear. My composites were not pre-drilled. The right-hand side spat fitted very nicely. The left-hand moulding appears to be different. The shorter ‘neck’ and support panel has less depth. A lot of fettling is required to get a good fit. Needed to take 5 mm off the neck of LH main wheel spat. Need to be very careful not to cross-thread the bolts in the rivnuts. They would be a real pain to replace! Used a homemade hole finder to align the front spat fixing holes and tow clamp holes. Used mobile phone on the floor to see into the spat, this was an enormous help.

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Priming

Alodining Small Parts

My quick build fuselage is largely already alodinded by the factory. Many additional parts to add to the fuselage that are untreated. Have decided to treat them with brush Bonderite M-CR ALCRM 1200. (Hard to get Alodine 1201 bath dip version). So that there is some consistency of treatment. My target is to treat any critical parts and those exposed to the elements, such as torque tube clamps and inspection panels. Pre-treated with Deoxidine 624 phosphoric acid. Applied the 1200 for 10 min. Even so, the colour didn’t turn out very deep, probably a bit too cold in the workshop. Like many fellow builders in the UK at present,  the empennage will use Aerowave treatment and spray the components.

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Finishing

Internal sound insulation

My kit had extra firewall foam in it, so I used it to add additional sound insulation to the fuselage. So now 3 layers of foam in places. Repurposed some of the packing crates to make inside seats in readiness for spending a lot of time on the control tubes!

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Engine

Engine Pipework

Having got the engine in place proceeded with oil, fuel and water hoses. The AN oil fittings are a very tight fit. Needed to heat up the oil pipe with a heat gun, add some light lithium grease, and support in a vice, to get them to fit all the way. Tightening the oil line AN fittings on the RHS sump of the engine is very tricky, only able to turn a small amount at a time. The nut on the LHS needs the silencer to be partially removed. Need to be careful not to overtighten aluminium fittings. Needs finger tight plus a 1/4 turn. Fuel hoses require heat shield silicone orange heatshield tricky to fit – used car tyre compressor to inflate – helps but still hard work to get proper fit. I noted that TAF has recently changed the fuel pressure sensor in the latest KAI. Note that 3/8″ SAE R9 fuel hose is specified throughout now for modern fuels. Need to get some R9 as my kit is missing a lot of fuel pipe. It’s easier to add the silver heat shield to oil and water pipes before the final install. The kit calls up plastic zip ties to hold hose standoffs in place. Having used these ties for many years in ham radio operations, I know that they perish easily even just outdoors, so I used some stainless steel ones. Throttle cable, be sure to use the correct PVC heat shield/stiffener hose. On each end of the throttle cable. No pre-drilled hole in my firewall for the throttle cable drilled a hole from photos. Fitted the brake hose, here is a picture of my standoff. Pictures in KAI are not clear on how to do this. KAI calls for a cut of the Rotax 915 exhaust pipe and fit a tailpipe. I made the cut with an angle grinder, but my tailpipe did not fit correctly. The expanded open end was not expanded far enough, to enable me to get the two exhaust clamps on. Plus there would be a leak at the join. The factory sent me a corrected tailpipe, no problem to fit with clamps now in the correct places. A few hours of trying to get it to fit was frustrating.

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Engine / Firewall Forward / Fuselage

Firewall Forward and engine

Prepared Firewall for engine mounting. Conscious that I needed to get as much as possible fitted and holes drilled before the engine gets in the way! Fitting the foam and firewall components was fairly straightforward. Provisioned 2 x M4 rivnuts and a space for the Midwest Panel fuse box that will be needed later. Some got ya’s along the way. The fuel return lines now go on the left of the firewall. The installation manual shows 3 holes on right but my plane only had 2. The fuel pump power connector needs to be extended, but which one, which one is main and which one is aux. Which is A and B? It seems that the top pump on the Rotax pump box (when mounted upside down) is the main A pump and the lower is Aux Pump B, so pump B line needs extending with high temp cable. I used double heat shrink and staggered the connections, then added some harness weave on top to match the rest of the harness. Useful to get the heavy electrical cables (4 – 6 AWG) installed or at least ready before engine mount. Add cable to the starter motor and engine block ground lead. Rented an engine hoist, all went fine until the last nut! Some points to note, that may help others who follow later. Rubber mounting bushes are a tight fit. (Note two different types – hard and soft rubber). They need to sit well down in the engine mount, Fairy liquid helps. Do this first otherwise, you will think like I did that the bolts are too short. (Bottom 2 bolts need to be cut to 122 mm to avoid interference with engine). (2 hrs of unnecessary work). Bottom right fixing at turbo. My engine, as shipped had a captive metric fine thread nut riveted on a plate for shipping (pic). Spent ages trying to bolt my metric coarse thread to it!! Needed to remove it (drill out rivet – hard to get to) and use the correct kit M10 nyloc nuts. Even so, it’s hard to torque up the bottom right bolt. After the engine was mounted proceeded with some plumbing. Intercooler – placing baffle and hose cutting straightforward. The baffle fibreglass mounting holes need drilling out to about 20 mm for the grommets.

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Brakes / Centre Console / Controls / Fuselage / heater, vent, / Interior / Rudder / Seats / Tools

Centre Fuselage and Seats

First tasks, checking inventory for the quick build fuselage, firewall forward and canopy kits many items missing. The elevator torque tube was very stiff as assembled by the factory. Had to drill out rivets and file down and realign all 4 bushes. A few special tools are needed to drill around corners in a tight space! 5 hours. But hopefully will pay dividends in smooth flight controls later. Adding rivnuts to the inside centre console. Getting good at this now. Having a bigger rivnut puller certainly helps when it can get into the space. Fitted rudder springs mid-fuselage – tricky leaning through the luggage door. Assembled Rudder pedals assembled and clecoed in place for now. Centre console box. Throttle/brake quadrant. All seats assembled (more than >>500 rivets right there) . Front seats backs spray painted with 2K aerosol (RAL 7005 Matt). Lets see if it’s hard wearing enough. Booster pump – learnt about differnt NPT fittings and torquing them. Hand tight + 1.3 turns typically. Dry fit heater and tubes. Naca ducts and fresh air assembly clecoded. Challenging to fit factory assembled elevator rod, eventually did per assembly instructions. From rear with some force and grease through the mid-fuselage grommet! Some have said that the fresh air mixer rattles and doesn’t close completely, so as it’s easy to do at this stage I added some 2 mm craft foam as others have done. Glued down with Gorilla glue.

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Misc

The Journey Begins

7 Oct 2021 first delivery My Sling TSI quick build kit first delivery. Although as I found out later, there were many missing pieces in the kit at this stage. Thanks to Bill for helping to unload the kit.

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Tools

Workshop

The Sling Tsi is about 7m long. Luckily this fits diagonally in my existing 5.5 x 5.5m double garage. Although there’s not enough height for the tail. The cars will stay on the drive for a while. Prior to taking delivery, I upgraded my garage. Some secondhand fluorescent lights from eBay were upgraded to 4000K light temperature tubes, some recycled PVC tiles to keep my feet warm in the winter. Built a bench with wheels and bought some tools, the most important being the Milwaukee rivet gun and lots of clecoes!

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