Kit arrival day is always a fun one. This one is sentimental as it is the last of the kits that will come from Van’s! After directing the truck driver through the airport, we were able to unload the crate. It was going to be a while until I could get to the inventorying, so for now we put the crate in the back of the hangar.
The finish kit is a pretty unique kit as it has some of the most unique parts. The canopy and cowling are large delicate items so I was curious how it was packed. There was also some major weldment assemblies including the engine mount, and canopy rails. As usual, Van’s did a great job packing everything. I wish I took some pictures of how everything fit together, but believe me, it was tight. Between the canopy, canopy rails, engine mount, and cowling, most of the crate was utilized.
After unloading everything, it was time to inventory. I’m happy to say almost everything was checked off the packing slips! There was only one small washer that was missing 5 units… easy enough to get backfilled from Van’s. One comment on the negative side. In this shipment it seems as if Van’s did a lot more mixing of a bunch of similar parts into the same baggie. The biggest offender was rivets. They would mix -4 and -5 rivets together and I would need to go through one by one to separate them out. Van’s! Please just put them in separate little baggies. It would have saved me easily 2+ hours.
Given I was in inventory mode, and since I need to start doing the landing gear fitment next, I went ahead and opened up my fancy Sky Design gear kit. These things are sweet! Believe it or not, they somehow drilled the brake fluid line directly into the leg body. And since the whole this is one piece of metal, there is no need to deal with leg fairings. Looking forward to getting this installed.
With everything inventoried, I realized I was running out of shelf space so it’s going to be time to install the flaps and clear out one whole shelf. I’ve been avoiding that project for a while, so it’s time to get it going. Until then… Happy Building!
1 comment
One more rivet on this wing. Have fun building