Sling Squawk – October 2021. Available Now!
Howzit Slingers!
It’s the 1st of October and we can really feel the season has changed in South Africa. Last night we got hit by the first of our spectacular summer Joburg lightning and thunderstorms, and it’s not stopped bucketing down since (login to our smart new webcam if you don’t believe me https://slingaircraft.com/about-us/live-feed/). So much in fact that we have sadly had to postpone our annual family day that was set for tomorrow. A great disappointment of course.
It’s lucky for us though that the rains didn’t start a week earlier, as last Friday, in the spirit of adventure and traveling, James and Branko set off in a Sling TSi with two Sling Cycles Tagati’s, to fly and cycle around South Africa and visit each of our 9 provinces in 3 days. On the 24th of September each year, we celebrate Heritage Day, so this was the perfect excuse for James and Branko to get out and experience a bit of culture in every corner of our country. The trip, although exhausting, was a great success and we will soon have a short film to share of the trip and in time a full-length doccie for you to enjoy.
Whilst on the topic of bikes and cycling, we this week entered a team of 10 Sling employees into the 94.7 Cycle Challenge in Johannesburg. The race, which is on the 21st of November, is 97 km (60 miles) long and takes you through and around historic Johannesburg. All 10 of us are amateur or beginner level cyclists, so a great deal of training is required to just get us to the finish as a team. Maybe next year we will be ready to enter a team into the Tour de France on Tagati’s. Yes, I think so!
Finally from me, the flight testing and final development of the Sling High Wing is now complete and we have started to see initial parts flown into our stores. For early kit customers, we are planning on sending out empennage and wing kits in December and January and for the first factory builds, we hope to have fuselages ready to be worked on before the Christmas shutdown. We have now taken deposits for and allocated 80 serial numbers on the Sling High Wing as interest continues to skyrocket.
At the risk of boring you and spoiling some of the stories below, I’ll sign off now and let you enjoy the news, videos and photos of Slings and Slingers around the globe.
Take the ticket, enjoy the ride.
Keep on Slinging!
Andrew Pitman
