Empennage Kit Arrives!

After a long 6 weeks of waiting, our empennage kit has finally arrived. This is the first and least expensive kit. This gives builders an ‘out’ if they decide building is not for them. Most of the tools can be sold for 75% of new and the kit itself can be as well.

We’ll learn a lot of new skills building this kit. But first we have to inventory EVERYTHING.

The kit arrived via Old Dominion. We’ve used these guys in the past and they seem pretty good. However, despite all the arrows indicating THIS WAY UP, I noticed it was tipped on end and strapped to the wall of the truck. Thankfully, Van’s packs these crates securely so nothing was damaged.

We opened up the yellow envelopes and removed the plans and packing list and began organizing the many parts. We were missing a couple of items but Van’s was quick to send them to us.

My very organized wife kept all the items broken down by subkit in the same location and maintained the numbering on each part as well. That way, when the plan calls for something like F-1007-L, we know just were to find it by looking the part number up in the packing list and seeing which subkit it belongs to.

Even the rivets and hardware came in BAGS. So when the plans call for part MS20392-1C11, we know this can be found in BAG 1139 which is kept in one of the plastic trays in the next photo. This has sped up the process of finding some of these items. Especially the small ones.

Rivets and “bags” of parts were labeled and added in numerical order. This 20 compartment bin was perfect for holding all the parts from the empennage kit. It worked out that bags 1122-1127 were all pop rivets, 1130-1133 were all the nut plates, 1134-1139 were bolts and pins, 1140-1147 were mostly nuts, and 1148-1151 were small misc parts! Rivets were also labeled numerically, with the flush rivets taking two rows, and the universal head rivets taking a row. Within each “bag” we separated individual parts into smaller bags yet. So the part we needed was in bag 1139 and then could easily be found since it was in its own labeled mini bag of MS20392-1C11.