Arrival

With Michela's help I moved the wings and wingstand to the lower part of the shop today. We put the left wing on the worktable and the right wing on the grass, followed by moving the stand through the garage door all the way around the fence through the door into the shop again. This was followed by moving the wings back in the stands again (nice and cozy next to the sofa). This will give me a lot more space for the fuse!

Screwed the two parts of the wing stand that I got from Jeff Vaughan today. This thing will be ready to take care of my first finished wing soon.

Used some bolts to make sure the spar won't fall off the stand.

Went to pick up the wing stand at Jeff's hangar at Brandywine Airport today (thanks again Jeff!). Michela came as well so she had a chance to see the RV-7A in real life. And man, I have some work coming at me... Here's a pic of Jeff's 7A with the wings bolted on. He told me that he could probably finish the work in two weeks if he would have the time. Well Jeff, here's some advice: take two weeks vacation and get this baby flying :-)

I guess I was lucky today: Jeff Vaughan emailed me and asked me if I wanted to have his wing stand, because he has just mounted his wings on his fuselage... forever! And of course I didn't say no to this offer, so I will go to Brandywine airport (that's where Jeff's hangar is) and pick the thing up. Thanks Jeff!!!

By the way, here is a pic of Jeff's panel. Looks pretty good.

Worked some more on the wing stands today and put the angle up that will carry the main spar. I've borrowed Rudy greyling's idea for the all-thread holder.

Put the second post up for the wing stand. Probably will put the angle this weekend.

More inventory tonight. This time unpacking all the small bags into their drawers.

I also hung up the 15 ft longerons and some other long aluminum angle.

And started to built the wing stand (I've decided to start building one wing at a time). The first post (I found some really nice 12 ft long 4x4's at Home Depot) has been bolted to the ceiling beam in the shop.

Tomorrow is Michela's birthday so probably won't be able to do much, but hopefully I will be able to finish the wing stand before the weekend and rivet the tank attach platenuts to the main spars.

The wing kit has finally arrived! Mike called me at 10:30 am to let me know that ABF would be at his loading dock around 10:45 am. So I jumped into my truck, arrived there about 25 mins later and found out that the AFB truck had already unloaded and left. Wow, pretty fast. I helped Mike load the 4 boxes on his trailer and we drove to my house to unload my two boxes. Man that spar box is long! That definitely would not have fit onto my small pickup truck. Here's a pic from the two boxes on my workshop floor:

Van's people have packed the two boxes very neatly (as expected).

Here are the center and wing spars in the box:

And then in the evening the real unpacking and inventory started. Wow there's a lot of paper that comes out of these boxes:

Here's a pic of the skins in the box and some of the stuff already on their shelfs.

And here are the wings spars. What a work of art these anodized pieces of aluminum are!

And finally after a couple of hours everything has been done and put on the shelfs. The only things left is inventory of all the bags of rivets, nuts and bolts. But that's for tomorrow...

The big moment is nearing. AFB has confirmed a Friday delivery between 10 am and 1 pm! 1.5 more days to go...

Wing kit has been shipped! ABF is driving the crates across the country for an estimated Friday April 18 delivery. Exiting times ahead :-)

Got word from Vans about the wing kit:

"Andre, I understand from my crating department that they were to work on crating up the RV-7 wing orders today and should ship by Friday. It takes about 6 working days to get to the east coast. I'll try to remember to contact you the day we ship with the tracking information. If I forget, please email again for the info. Barb"

Hmmm, that means probably another 1.5 weeks of waiting!

Getting close! Wing kit will (hopefully) be shipped in approx. a week. Finished Mike's elevators yesterday, so he's also getting ready to start his wings. We've decided to make steel wing stands; Mike has some welding equipment, so we think we should be able to do this ourselves...

Wing kit shipping is only 3 weeks away! (excitement kicking in)

Well I guess I've changed my mind due to talking to Van's... I have taken an important decision today: instead of the fuselage kit I have ordered the wing kit today! And probably will go for the QB fuse later on. Although when I can get the wings build within 6 months or so (and I think that's realistic) I might go slow-build fuselage as well.

I've decided to go quick-built on the wings and thus will start building the fuselage first since the lead time on the QB wings is 8 months or so. In that time I will hopefully be able to get quite far with the fuse. This means that the wings have to wait until the beginning of 2009!