The Day Has Come....

 Well after a long anticipated wait, the first kit arrived yesterday.  I was a bit disappointed to be starting on the wings before the tail, but I am glad to at least have something to work on.  I am waiting for one or two more parts for my Air Hose system.  I opted to buy the Rapid Air Products RapidAir System.  This was a good setup as it had 100 feet worth of hose and two outlets.  It would allow me to setup a drop down reel, and remote reel by the garage, and keep my compressor in the back of my garage.  I am trying to maximize the distance from the bedrooms to the compressor so I can hopefully work in the evening after my kids are asleep.  Time will tell how that plan will work out, I might be limited to certain tasks only late in the evening.  I am going to do another post about that system and my feelings on the setup for it.

The Truck Has Arrived.

I got notification last week from Van's that my kit was shipping and it took 8 days for it to get to my local depot.  I am on eastern Long Island so I was expecting a week or so for transit.  The wing kit is two crates, a small and long one plus a another "average" size crate for a kit plane.  The long crate is flagged as oversize by the freight company which I am sure didn't help the hefty freight bill I got.  I arranged for a few sets of hands to be on hand for the delivery and we were able to move the crate without issue.  

Opening the crates and beginning inventory.

We moved everything into the garage and I only had two small concerns after unloading.  The regular sized crate was placed on its side by the freight delivery truck.  This crate was clearly marked which way to be stored, yet they put it on its side.  To make matters worst, this was was delivered on a completely empty box truck by itself, there was tons of room to place it flat.  When we got it off the truck we also noticed a small bit of damage to the bottom of one corner to the crate.  The damage was just some separation of the bottom but nothing severe.  I have to give credit where it is due, Van's does an awesome job packing.  Everything was wrapped in paper and the crate was packed with additional paper to keep everything from shifting or moving.  As well, all the larger skins were taped together or to the crate edges on top of cardboard to provide additional padding and support.  I was really impressed with the packing.

My lovely daughter has volunteered to be my inventory assistant.  She will snack and supervise Daddy while I inventory... Can I have her job?

I spent about two hours going through all of the large parts and inventorying the kit.  I was impressed to find everything exactly as expected. There were about three items backordered but nothing I think is critical until much later.  I have to do the small hardware inventory tonight, there are alot of little bags of various rivets, bolts, etc.. 

On a comical note, my daughter who is three has been super excited about "Daddy building a plane".  She was quite excited and wanted to help pull everything out through the inventory.  As she helped to her best ability, which collecting all the packing material was a perfect job, she kept asking me where we were gonna fly to tonight in our new plane.  It was a good laugh to see my daughter excited and she wants to help me build.  Maybe I will have a little builder to help along the way.