Oct 14, 2023     Laser Cut Parts Inventory and Inspection - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

With the updated Vans documentation on the laser cut parts, I went and dug out all of the various Wing parts and inspected those that were on 'the list'. And, thankfully, my kit was minimally impacted. As my Tail Kit was shipped on 4/6/21 and the first instance (documented, at least) of LCPs was 2/16/22, none of my empennage kit was impacted (which made that inventory really easy - and thankfully so, as most of my empennage is now assembled and I didn't think to take pictures of each part prior to working with it (maybe I should for the future parts)?

For the Wings, I discovered that I have the following parts of my Wing kit as LCP (laser cut parts):
W-1006F
T-1002
T-1005BC
A-710
W-1009-L/R-3

And, even luckier, of all those parts, only one is in the 'yellow' category (category key below), the only impacted part is W-1006F.

So, I'll consider myself quite lucky that I've been building slowly (helps to identify parts easier), and that I was minimally impacted.

Categories:
Red: Replacement Recommended
Yellow: Replacement Recommended
Blue: Acceptable for Use
Green: Acceptable for Use

  Apr 30, 2022     Aggregate Inventory of Wing Parts - (12 hours)       Category: Wings

I've been working on inventorying the wing parts the past few weeks, an hour here and an hour there. I likely spent almost double the logged hours, but that was on storage and re-sorting parts. I ended up designing some small part drawers as my previous case-method wasn't going to work in time as Flambeau was undergoing a fairly length website overhaul project.

Regardless, I'm pretty happy with how everything ended up, things are well sorted, I have the entire empennage and wing kit stored on the wire shelves, and I was able to get back to building today!

  Apr 02, 2022     The Wings have arrived - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Exciting times, the wings have finally arrived! Looks like that would make it a 9 month, 8 day duration from time of order placement to the time of crate arrival at my home. Honestly, not bad considering the backlog Vans has been working through, and their timing estimates were accurate to within +4 weeks from when I ordered.

The wing crates were much easier to offload from the semi with the forks, since the boxes were only ~200lbs or less each, they were an easy lift (albeit, long boxes). The crates were in good condition, missing a couple of the. 2x4 skids that are integral to the crates, but there was no internal damage to anything. Whomever packs these crates at Vans is an artist - I'm always impressed at how securely packed everything is.

Once I got the crates moved down into the airplane factory (reminder for my new-er readers: I'm currently working in a 1 car garage in my basement), I unloaded all of the part groupings to prepare for inventory. I'll likely have to redistribute my current parts and reorganize things so that I'm not constantly digging through parts when I'm trying to build.

Time-note: I unloaded for ~45 minutes on 3/29,and then unloaded/unpacked the crates on 4/2.

  Jun 14, 2021     Wing Kit Ordered Category: Wings

Exciting times, given the 7 month lead time on the slow-build wing kit, I've placed my wing order as of today, let the great countdown to January (-ish) 2022 begin!