By the time I get my Sling TSI aircraft kit, it will have spent half a year on the water being shipped…. Wow.

So what is one to do while waiting ?

Workshop preparation, Sure.

Watching Evan’s sling build videos, of course.

Stalking shipping container ships online, absolutely.

To that end, I tracked my container and its ship to the Port of Rotterdam. And as it turns out, the port of Rotterdam has a lot of webcams… Surely you can see where this is going. Somewhere in the circle below is my container.

Received a call from Jean and Barry, just minutes ago… My plane is floating. It is on a cargo ship, on its way here. Moving at an incredible speed of 7k. So probably another month since it has to stop in a port in Germany first before it crosses the Atlantic to the U.S.

Time to start making my EA1000 table.

I hope the title doesn’t get anyone’s hopes up. I still have not received any shipping updates since the erroneous update a month ago stating mine had already shipped. And now the airplane factory says they will be closed from today, dec 15 until jan 3rd. ( understandable so, but wow. I wish I could take off 3 weeks for christmas) So I won’t be getting any new information anytime soon.

I want to share information that I researched about air freight. Instead of the standard two month long shipping by sea option. I looked into shipping , ( seems like the wrong word when a ship isn’t involved), it by air freight. Air freight would get it to me in 1 week versus 2 months (if I’m lucky) by water. Barry from Torrance sent me the dimensions of the crates that would need to be shipped for the quickbuild,

One box: 45 – 50kg (1581mm x 761mm x 201mm)

Second box: 200 – 220kg (4850 x 1600 x 700mm) 

Third box: 220 – 250kg (6000 x 1400 x 1300mm)

Fourth box: 65 – 75 kg (1261 x 1171 x 681mm)

Per DHL this would cost me $20,0000(usd) wow

Per R&L carriers this would cost me $27,000(usd) really wow !

Soooo,,, despite my complete and total lack of patience… Standard shipping it is. I do believe air freight for a non-quickbuild with much smaller boxes would be much cheaper.

Other random information that I acquired… A shipping container ship can go from the tip of africa to the east coast of the usa in 15-20 days. But most do not. The boat that my container will be on, will most likely go up the coast of africa stop several times along the coast of europe, stop in germany then cross the atlantic. Then it works its way down the east coast from port to port………Soo…. its gonna be awhile, months.

My shipment has been delayed… Turns out the pictures that I received and posted were not of my plane. Despite having paper taped to them with my name.. ??..??.. Apparently that plane is going to some other lucky person. I asked the status of my shipment and was told that mine will be ready this week and put into containers next week and sent to the shipper… And with the given global shipping problems currently happening…. If I am very lucky my container full of plane parts will be on the water this year. (that only being 4 more weeks) So that means it will take me about 3 weeks longer to get it than I previously expected. I understand these things happen, so no biggie. I just hope there are no more delays and when the shipment arrives all the parts are actually all here.

Okay, the interesting stuff,,, in the latest release of the TSI POH they subtlety slipped in a new approved propeller manufacture. They are still using airmaster for the controller and the hub but now they approve of a new propeller from Sensenich. Don’t bother looking for it on their website. I am told it is a proprietary version specifically for the TSI.

Second interesting thing,,, as I found on FB, an individual in New Zealand is working with BRS to fit a BRS chute to the TSI. Apparently, it is significantly smaller and about 7 lbs less. The exact price is still up in the air (pun intended) but all the other aspects sound good to me.

Thirdly, here is another idea that I stole from FB. To create a POH. Simply download the pdf and send it to www.print-my-pdf.com and they sent me a printed and binded POH. for cheap… like $15. Literally the whole process took less than 10 minutes. I know that I am jumping the gun a little bit but I was bored.

I am now at the stage of trying to coordinate the logistics of the many purchases included in building your own plane. So far I have ordered the complete quickbuild kit. It should be on the boat any day now. My goal, albeit optimistic(very), is to complete the build in 6 months from when it arrives. Stop laughing. Gotta have goals. So to that end, I need to start ordering the other aspects. Those being,

the engine, propeller and firewall forward kit

the avionics

random parts such as lights

and specialty tools

One of many of the problems trying to plan for this is of course, lead times. Right now there are still covid delays and now there are sea shipping delays. Not even to mention coordinating the massive financial aspect. Full disclosure, the financial aspect, includes timing selling my existing Cirrus sr22 at the correct moment in order to put the proceedings into the new build but minimize my time without a plane.

So to that end, last week, I put my order into the panel builders. And this week I am putting my order in for the engine. I am told that the biggest delay right now is the propeller from New Zealand and that will be 25 weeks. Can’t say I like putting that much money out and not getting something in return for HALF a year !

So,,, wish me luck.

This is my Blog… I will be documenting my Sling TSI build and purchase process from beginning to end. I shall be attempting to make several customizations to my build as well as complete the build as soon as possible. So that should make for an interesting balancing act.

I am migrating away from a Cirrus SR22 G2. I realize there is a big difference there. The Sling is much slower and carries less useful load. But I will do my best to handle the difference, whatever that might mean.

I purchased my quick build kit from the Airplane Factory in Torrance, CA in mid Aug 2021. I am told that it will be done around the end of October 2021. But due to current shipping problems worldwide, I am told not to expect it to ship until the end of November and it will not arrive until Feb or March.