TL Aircraft Owners Association

I have some questions about when you guys made the trip to build your airplanes.

• What was the trip to the Czech Republic like?
• Where did you stay?
• Did you get an International Driving Permit and then rent a car?
• How much time did you spend per day actually working on the airplane? (I ask because I want to maximize this time)
• Did you work on weekends?
• Did you bring your spouse with you?
• What did they do while you were working on the airplane?
• How long where you actually there?
• Did you go early or stay later for site seeing?
• Any suggestions or recommendations to best use the time there?

This was not initially clear to me and this is my understanding of the system, so I thought I might share for Sparker and Stream operators.

The gear system is set up to inhibit gear retraction until a certain pressure (airspeed) is sensed (this is set by the factory and rumor has it set around 60-65KIAS range). Obviously the gear would retract on the ground if the battery is turned on with the gear switch inadvertently in the down position. First item on my before start flow is gear switch down.....

The situation I ran into was a failure of the gear to retract. This occurred while practicing short field take-offs.  I apparently raised the gear before meeting the airspeed threshold and the gear failed to retract. Subsequently lowered the gear without incident and landed. We  jacked up the aircraft for inspection and ops check and everything checked good. Shout out to Trey and Zach for the quick drop in to help investigate the matter!  No more issues after a better understanding of the system.

I tested this safety system on my conditional inspections and it worked as advertised, not retracting with 0 airspeed. In the mx mode the gear operated normally.


Hope this helps!
Steve B

This board is for discussion about the first 50 hours of flying your TL Aircraft.

BTW, I really appreciated your article about working with the company. That helped confirm what I saw from ForFunFlyer when he did a factory tour.

Also, are you free to share the tail # of the airplane in eastern TN?

The intermittent stinger light was traced back to the plug.  (accessible through my rear inspection plate) At first glance I thought the connector was a splice until I pulled on one and it unplugged. I cut the blue insulation back; it was too long and allowed only a shallow connection.  I seated the plugs and put some shrink wrap to hold them in place. Pretty sure it was the reliance on the tie wraps that were used to hold them closed that was causing the issue.
The main issue is the new and brighter bulbs (one with more LED’s) have teeth grips at the 12 and 6 o’clock position which makes the bulb out of round.  I carefully squeezed on those two points to bring it into round.  Bulb now easily inserts into the socket and is no longer difficult to remove.
The initial difficulty in getting a bulb in or out of the socket was a result of the socket hole being too small and ever so slightly out of round. I used a Dremel with a chainsaw sharping file to round out and ever so slightly enlarge the opening and solved this quickly. Inserted the bulb backwards to gauge the progress. 
For those of us with this lighting system, I hope this helps.  Rumor has it Whelen Lighting systems might be on the way.

Steve B