Spent about an hour and a half tonight doing inventory. Slow process, but important.
Quickbuild Wings and Fuse arrive
Today was a big day! My Quickbuild fuselage and wing kits arrived! I decided to use Stewart Trucking to have it delivered, rather than having it crates and shipped. I’m glad I did, as the whole process was easy and painless. Mike the driver was excellent to work with, and we had the wings and then fuselage down in no time.
The most difficult part of unloading was getting the wings down onto the back of the truck. Mike has 6 pairs of wings, and 5 fuselages in the truck, and my wings were loaded on a rack near the top of the truck. It was slightly awkward getting the wings down, mostly due to the greasy film on the wing surfaces, which is applied to avoid any possible corruption while skipping. Holding a slippery wing over my head, and then trying to lower it down was a bit nerve-wracking, but not very hard. Then we carefully wheeled the cart into the garage.
With the wings off, Mike used the crane to hoist the fuse up, lift it back and out of the truck. With my dolly parked behind the truck, he easily dropped it into position. Weighing in at 600 pounds, we were careful to put it in the middle, and where I wanted it. then it was up into the garage, no problem.
I spent the evening unpacking the plane, and inspecting as best I could. I didn’t see any problems, but I will be doing a through inspection of every step to ensure there are no mistakes. For tonight I was happy to just get the fuse emptied of the various boxes and parts.
Built Fuse Dolly
In preparation for the arrival of my Quickbuild fuselage, I built a dolly. Looking at the plans and the shipping crate sizes to get an idea of dimensions, I constructed a 4×8 foot dolly out of 2×4 and plywood. I picked up some wheel, and installed 6 castoring wheels, each of the corner wheels has a brake.
Ordered Quickbuild Wings and Fuse kits
Today I placed my order for the QB wings and fuselage kits. The estimated lead time is 3 months, which covers the time up to delivery to the Vans factory for quality control inspection. From there, it will be crated and shipped, which will be a few more weeks. Based on my current progress and “velocity”, it should be arriving about the right time.
Looking at the elevator and trim tab plans, it’s going to be quite interesting to build. Lots of small parts, some new material (foam), the dreaded tank sealant, more trailing edge riveting, and (the hardest thing so far), leading edge rolling!