Replacement parts finally in

[Jeff R]

This waiting for replacement parts to arrive has been the pits!

Being at the opposite corner of the country from Vans and waiting some 10 or 11 days has forced me to, egads, actually resort to cleaning up the shop a little bit. I have finished up most of those tasks on the empennage that I can do without these parts, and the withdrawal pains have been severe indeed. But, tonight, I will be back in action! The tracking log shows my parts have finally made it onto the local delivery truck. Everything now should come together. I am taking a few days off next week to attend Comic-Con (yes, I have teenagers and, no, they are not boys and, no, even with an interest in comic books and even Star Trek, they are not into airplanes and think "riveting" is how you would describe a Harry Potter action scene). Anyway, as I was starting to say, I should get the empennage finally finished before I leave the middle of next week, and the wing kit is supposed to be shipped about the time I get back, so hopefully, I will have that kit by the weekend of the week I get back home. Having a few days to further clean and organize the shop to accept a long crate of wing parts will be good. Ever since I opened the garage door to my shop one day and looked down at a pretty colored snake with yellow-red-yellow banding near my feet, I am pretty careful about cleaning up and where I put my hands. (I blame that incident on some sloppy riveting I did ? hands were shaking from my near-death experience!)

Even though the empennage construction has been a challenge at times, and while it has even brought forth some colorful adjectives on occasion (rare for me) in an expression of disgust at my apparent lack of intelligence, it has all been a blast and I can't wait to start on the wing.

 

[Fearless]

Snake(s) in a garage are bad

Jeff,

I keep my garage where I'm building my 9A fairly clean and haven't see any unwanted visitors. It was my other garage where the cars are that I had a snake episode. I was walking out to feed my husky and in the corner of my eye I see what I think is a snake at the edge of the overhead door track and the dog bowl in my hand went a flying. Lucky for me it was a baby and was as afraid of me as I of it. I think it might have been a copperhead. Well that baby is no more but the other day while cutting my yard I found the skin of its mommy among the trees in the front yard. Now I watch my back constantly. LOL, I quess my neighbors wonder why my yard is cut so close to the ground.

 

[Jeff R]

Slightly damaged rudder skin from shipping

Amazing that over the 10 days or so I had little to do on my plane that I got so out of shape. A couple hours of drilling and dimpling and my back was pretty sore last night, just like in the beginning days. I did spend some time drilling out rivets (forgot to order a new E-905, dummy) and I decided to use my cordless drill instead of the much lighter air drill (trying to bulk the old arms up again). But, yeah, things are moving forward again and my building addiction is being satisfied.

Only one tiny little problem with my new parts. My rudder skins were slightly bent during shipping by that big semi-circular hunk cyliderically shaped paper tube that protects the leading edge bend of the elevator. The shipping containing was clearly damaged and someone used a lop of clear packing tape, and when it was dropped or whatever, I think the skin bent around the tube in few places, with the biggest dent down at the bottom where the box was crushed. The bends are not real bad....I don't really know if I should complain or not. I will probably end up dinging a rivet or two which will make a bigger eyesore than these, but I just spent close to $40 on a new skin and to start off with something even slighly damaged.... But I thought I would post some pictures and see what you guys thought. I am not keen on waiting another week for a replacement. Well, in a week, I will be heading to Comic-Con to serve as a benchwarmer and ATM.

Here is an image of the bottom of the skin. The dark reflection is from my DRDT dimpler. The area in the black ellipse shows the worst deformation.

This is some of the damage midway up the skin in the middle. It is not real significant, but you can see some distortions in the relection in the aluminum. The rounh area between the two ovals are scuff marfs caused by that cardboard tube that came through the plastic film. I am not too concerned with that, as this in an inside view of the skin. But, it does show the skin suffered some degree of abuse.

Here is a picture of the shipping container before I opened it up. (I get my shipments are work, and our receiving guy didn't notify the carrier of any damage).

What do you guys think I should do?