It arrived!

Finally after nearly 6 months since placing the order, my empennage and wing kits arrived safe and sound in NZ, and I was relieved to see no sign of any damage to the 3 rather large crates. Not bad considering they came from the factory in Aurora, Oregon, via truck to LA, and then by container ship into Auckland, followed by a couple of truck trips to get to me down in Cambridge.

So without delay it was time to take the crow bar to get inside and see what all my $$ had actually purchased. Full credit to Vans – the packing of every part was meticulous and some serious planning has obviously gone into ensuring everything fits into the smallest possible crate.

some time later after unpacking each part and starting to wonder what I had let myself in for I starter inventorying from the detailed packing list. This was pretty time consuming in itself taking a couple of evenings as you need to go through several bags with specific quantities of screw and rivets. Luckily you don’t need to count most of the various rivets supplied – which is just as well given one box has 10,000 of them inside it!

Eventually after checking everything off I discovered only a couple of packs of screws and some rivets missing. One email to Vans and they sorted this no probem.

That left a lot of packing paper to get rid of and also the crates which needed disposing of – However the dogs had other ideas and so the first thing I made was a giant dog bed for my build assistants. Here are the before and after pics –