The wing kit arrived yesterday via Conway Freight.
I was worried that I (alone) wouldn’t be able to get the boxes off the truck and into the garage but the driver was 100% prepared. They had a lift gate and a palate jack. More pictures later but just to give an idea…
Inventory is well underway and should be finished today. Need to figure out a place to store big things like the wing tips and little things like countless plate nuts…
Preparations Are Underway!
Ashley here! I have the privilege of helping to document our building process – so here is my very first attempt at blogging!! We have officially begun the task of turning our garage from a parking place for our cars, to a workshop and home for our airplane! KC found a fantastic deal on a new air compressor and we rented a U-Haul van to pick it up, along with lumber to build our work benches and a new tool box to hold all of our fancy new airplane building tools. The tools arrived today!
I have to say that it feels a little bit like buying and organizing school supplies at the beginning of the year, which is very exciting for me!
And of course the boys were there to help!
RV-14A It Is!
It’s official! We placed the order for our RV-14 wing kit today and I’m hoping that it will ship sometime before the Christmas break. We officially have dibs on Vans RV-14 serial number 140026.
I expect that the wing kit will take around 500 man-hours so this should keep me busy for a while but the empenage kits should be ready to ship by the end of the year or so…in plenty of time.
Among the Van’s Aircraft models, we chose the RV-14 primarily because of the more roomy cabin and suitability for cross-country trips. We will build the nose wheel version (versus the tail dragger) and the slider canopy is not available on the 14 so tip up it is!
So, let the adventure begin!
SportAir Workshop
On August 18 and 19, Dad drove down and went with Ashley and I to the EAA SportAir Workshop on building a Vans RV. The workshop was held in Waco by the local EAA chapter there. The intent of the workshop is to give future builders an introduction to the tools and techniques required to build an airplane. The do this by building a couple of practice projects. The first is just a few pieces of aluminum riveted together to work on technique. We each completed our own version of this and Ashley easily bettered both of the guys.
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After that we worked together to complete a small airfoil piece similar to the control surfaces on the Vans kits. All in all, we had a great time of working with the tools and gaining confidence.
Oshkosh 2012
Well, I will get this thing started. This week Ashley and I went to AirVenture 2012 in Oshkosh WI to get a full immersion into the world of experimental aviation. While there, we looked at homebuilt aircraft of all flavors and got to sit in a Van’s RV-10.
We are scheduled to attend the EAA Sportair class “Building a Van’s RV” next month so I think we’re getting close to taking the plunge.
