May 01, 2024     Parts Finally! - (2.0 hours)       Category: Misc

Finally received the replacement parts from Vans after about 4 months of waiting. Not bad considering they are estimating 12-18 months to completely replace all the old laser cut parts. Needless to say the new parts are not laser cut, back to the punch press and nice clean parts. Now after more than 7 months off, we can get back to it.

Before I do anything, I need to get the skills sharpened again. It's like riding a bike for some things like riveting, you don't forget but you do get rusty. With that in mind I intentionally saved the Van's light box practice kit all winter long for when I was ready to start building again so I could brush up with that first before getting back to the actual build.

To be honest it was actually fun to put this little light box kit together, to make some design decisions on it, which rivets to use and where, whether to drive the rivet, pull the rivet or set it with the squeezer. I ended up doing all of the above to brush up on all the tools and skills and the little light box came out great. I was surprised at how quickly I picked things back up and knowing I could just set each rivet and not worry about it's quality was a fun way to spend a day. I even primed the inside surfaces so as not to be reflective. I think I missed the smell of the self-etching primer, LOL!

After a day of building the light box was pretty much complete. I ordered some different electronics off of Amazon for it so that I could hang it up on the wall and have the cord reach the outlets. Otherwise pretty much built it to spec other than the little bracket I made to hold the LED power supply internally.

Now it's time to get serious once again. I cut new 2" aluminum spacers for the tie down attach brackets which I ordered a new set off of the internet that have the holes already tapped for the tie down rings so one less chore to have to do. I just remembered that I bought upgraded tie down rings so I need to make sure those two parts will mate up.

So 7+ months from the last time the two wing spars saw the light of day I uncovered them and the build is officially on once again. My goal is to finish the two fuel tanks this summer taking advantage of the warm temps to be able to work with the ProSeal. We'll see.

  Mar 18, 2024     New Parts on the way, finally - (.1 hour) Category: Misc

Confirmed my order for replacement LCP. Just over $1700 to replace all the LCP's in the wing kit. It's time to get going again, it's been far too long.

I would like to order the fuse kit but with the current state of affairs at Van's, zero confidence in ordering anything right now so gonna wait for a while.

  Mar 08, 2024     Still not much to report - (.1 hour) Category: Misc

Van's did send the order form for the replacement parts. I put in my requested parts and nothing but crickets since then.

  Feb 07, 2024     Two months later, nothing really to report Category: Misc

Just watching the time pass as Vans tries to sort out their mess and turn things around. I finally received the email from Vans asking me to confirm which parts I wanted to replace. As planned, I selected all laser cut parts for replacement. Easy decision since none are installed just yet. This will cost me an additional $1637 on top of already paying for the wing kit. It's awesome to have to pay for the same parts twice. 90 new parts in total, Vans is covering the 8 parts they deem worthy of replacement in the wing kit. I am on the hook for the rest. But in their generosity, they gave myself and everyone else in this mess, a 25% discount off the price of the parts. Fair enough except when you realize this is 25% off of the newly increased prices for these same parts. Since prices have gone up on average about 30% on parts, I'm actually not getting any discount at all on these parts, in fact it is costing me more than if I had just ordered the same parts new back in the fall of 2023. Very frustrating but they claim without the price increases, they will be sunk. What's a man to do???

Also they have a policy now of not allowing any deletions of parts from a kit. So thins like a cowling, gear legs, brakes, all those will now be shoved down your throat whether you want to use them or not. Not sure how a company like Show Planes will deal with this as that's their entire business model. Hopefully someone in Aurora will come to their senses about this well before I need to order any of those pieces.

What a cluster....

  Dec 08, 2023     Vans is bankrupt.... Chapter 11 style.... - (0.05 hour)       Category: Misc

Well a month on and Vans officially files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. So no real updates to speak of on the build. I did buy some stuff from Van's to 'help' their cash flow but it was more to give myself something to do for now. I think the only reason for writing this update is so that the automated reminder at EAA leaves me alone for another few months and to be able to look back some day on this writing and remember how bad things were.

Worst case they go insolvent and I'm left with a complete'ish empennage and a bunch of worthless wing parts. Less worse case is that they jack the prices of everything up by many double digits and it just got way more expensive to do this and the timeline stretched out even further.

It's still early in the process but it looks like in order to save Van's, it's going to get really expensive for anyone involved. For my part it appears I will be getting replacement wing kit parts sometime in the coming year, no timeline given at this point. What I don't know as of the writing of this is how much if anything that is going to cost. A judge in Oregon will eventually decide. We'll see.

In the meantime one of the things I bought from Van's was the lightbox practice kit so I will start assembling that for something to do over the upcoming holidays.

Good times!

  Nov 01, 2023     Vans is in trouble.... - (0.6 hour) Category: Misc

Another month has gone by and the news coming out of Aurora, Oregon (home of Vans) has gotten even worse than before. Long story short, Vans has run out of operating capital and has paused their operations in an attempt to restructure the company. I won't go into how they got here, you can Google it and read all about it.

What that means for me: I've got it comparatively good, I'm just waiting on new parts to replace the laser cut parts that Vans instructed to scrap as well as all the other parts that I want to replace. I had yet to install any of the bad parts so it's just a simple matter of getting new parts and moving on. Unfortunately as of Nov 1, 2023 there is no timeline for when or if that process will happen. To be frank, Vans has a mess on their hands as thousands of builders are affected by this, 1800+ to be exact and a very large number of those builders, including myself, are requesting replacement of ALL of their laser cut parts, not just the ones that their engineering analysis has deemed un-airworthy. This apparently has taken Vans by surprise and they cannot for now honor these requests. They are already cleaning up a mess from quick build kits that had corrosion in them to the tune of millions of dollars. This next issue with the parts has the potential to put them out of business all together.

No one wants that obviously. Most of us just want to get good parts and continue building. Unfortunately the costs of this endeavor get higher and higher every year. If Vans pulls through this (and there's very little reason to think they won't) their kit and part prices will almost certainly increase and not by a small amount. Between the pandemic, supply chain challenges, labor shortages, and extremely long kit lead times, Vans has been selling kits at a loss for a while now. That is easily correct on their end by raising prices or moving to a different payment system. Gone will be the days of locking in your kit price when you order it. Interesting times ahead for sure.

So what am I going to do?? My only choice is to be patient and watch quietly from the sidelines as one of the most iconic names in general aviation on this planet struggles to keep the lights on. The laser cut parts debacle is only one of several major challenges they are facing and in a list of priorities, is not at the top. So the builders log updates may cease for a while. There are some small tasks I can work on which I will continue to log here but if this takes a while to sort out, the project may get put on hold for the winter. Time will tell.

  Nov 01, 2019     Practice Makes Perfect - Or Close Enough - (10 hours)       Category: Misc

So far I have built two of the Van's practice kit tool boxes and one of the practice kit airfoil sections. Each time I have improved my building skills. One thing that people really don't tell you is that it will take some time and practice to figure out the best air pressure settings, drill speeds, hand holds, positions, etc on just how to approach certain aspects of working with the aluminum sheet metal.

I purposely went through the first practice tool box without putting much thought into how to do certain things. I wanted that one to be a learning experience and that's exactly what it was. The second tool box came out much better and I was ready to tackle the airfoil section.

The airfoil kit is a bit more difficult and involved than the tool box. If you're only going to do one practice kit, make it the airfoil section as it involves far more building techniques than does the toolbox.

One thing I learned working on the airfoil is that I still didn't have all the tools I needed. Dimpling the last set of holes in a wing rib where there is basically no room to get a dimpler or squeezer in there requires a different technique. So out came the credit card and yet more money in tools was spent. You can never have enough tools apparently.

Ironically the most difficult part of the practice airfoil was bending the leading edges to a nice curved shape and working with the trailing edge wedge. Both of these required techniques that I had not ever attempted in the EAA Sheet Metal workshop, the Sheet Metal class at AirVenture or the previous practice kits.

Overall it came out ok but I again made some mistakes that I will correct on the second version of the airfoil project. The good news is that I now feel ready to tackle the empennage pieces having practiced and learned most of the techniques that will be required.

The second airfoil project is going to include everything including priming. To that end I have finally decided to use the SEM line of primer products for ease of use and simplicity. I personally think builders way overthink the priming of their parts. Having met with one of the country's top RV builders who has the Gold, Silver and Bronze Lindy trophies to prove it, he literally uses a rattlecan primer from WalMart for the professional builds that he now does for clients. Keep it simple Stupid principal in full effect here.

To that end I will now need to construct a paint booth in the shop. PVC and plastic sheeting should do the trick.

What I'm also learning is that you have to do certain steps of the build out of order if you intend to prime your parts. Most builders seem to match drill everything and cleco it together, dimple, prime and then rivet. Although I think I picked up a good tip the other night where one builder says he actually scuffs his parts before he dimples them which actually makes a lot of sense.

So hopefully the next entry will be of the priming process in new paint booth.

  Nov 01, 2019     Misc 1       Category: Misc