So, after several years of dinking around with the Rans S-17, I got the chance to get into a Flighstar IISL fairly cheaply, so I took it.

It's a 2 seater that falls under the light sport plane limitations.  It's got a Rotax 502 air cooled engine, and flies nice and slowly, without any tricky handling quirks (that I've found).







Don was selling it because he's an instructor, and it struggles to get in the air with 2 large people due to the smallish engine.  It'd be fine with a 582, but I don't need the extra power.  Don flew it to Lincoln, and then Vince ferried it over to Freedom Field and converted it using the parts from the Rans.

We've had problems with the compass, stator, radio and VSI, but it's flying now :o)






The instrument panel has been a bit of a trial. This was it when I bought the plane - quite a mishmash of instruments. An interesting thing is that the tachometer is wildly inaccurate, so there was a digital one mounted at head height.









The first step was to tidy the thing up. With Vince's help I installed a VSI, got a new digital tachometer (the wires on the one that was on the plane when I bought it were too short) and installed an intercom - the radio has some sort of intercom that the original builder, Don and then Vince were unable to get working in a normal manner.









The latest incarnation was a totally new panel. I bought a Grand Rapids EIS system that Vince had picked up from a broken plane, and that replaced the CHT, EGT, VSI and voltmeter. It could do the altimeter and tachometer too, but the display isn't big enough to show everything at once. One of the nice things is that it has a large red light that flashes when there's a problem, so you don't need to monitor everything all the time. I had a trial installing it, and then getting everything to work properly (I ended up replacing all the probes), but it looks like it'll be a winner. I haven't redone the labels for everything, so these are temporary, and this was before I got the 12V accessory sockets installed and the labels tidied up.  The rev counter was going mad above ~5400rpm, and the first suggestion (a 10K ohm resistor) stopped it working entirely.  The next suggestion, running from the regulator, worked fine once I'd run the wires correctly to avoid causing interference with the radio.  The regulator stops drawing power when the battery is fully charged, but running with the strobes on solves that, as its capacitor is always drawing power.  I might put a different regulator on at some point, if it really bothers me.