Inventorying |
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| Today we opened the finishing kit crate and confirmed the rough contents. As you can see the international shipping with plastic weather protection is pretty though. | 
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| The crate packing is quite a work of art. In this one crate the full finishing kit and firewall forward kit is accommodated. | 
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| Also I got the packing list out of the finishing create so that I could digitise it into a Excel spreadsheet. (Why VANs can't provide electronic copies of the pick list beats me.....) I've now digitised the fuselage and the finishing crate lists - ~ 6 hours...... | |
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| Final clearing and cleaning of the shed getting ready for unpacking and inventorying of the delivery. It won't be this 'empty' again for quite a while. | 
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| Started the unpacking process with the finishing create. Mainly removing lots of paper wrapping and making sure there is nothing left over and thrown away.
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| After you remove the engine cowls and several layers of paper then you get to the single piece canopy. We were a little worried about how and where we were going to store this large bulky item but stuck on a brain wave.
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| After extracting the canopy we used some gaff tape to maintain its shape. I've been advised by other builders that it can 'sag' over a period of time and this is a way of stopping it. | 
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| The canopy in its safe resting place until it is needed. This is right in one corner of the shed and well out of the way. It only just fitted (about an 1/2 inch to spare) and it is sitting on top of a layer of polystyrene from the fuselage create. | 
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| Back to the finishing shipping create and there is yet more goodies, all individually wrapped. | 
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| At right at the bottom is the engine mount, gear legs and main tires. | 
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| Opened and visually checked the wing shipping crate. Then we put a supporting bar on the top and stood it back up. | 
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| Next came the empennage kit be unpacked (nice to know we are following the strict VAN's sequence :-) | 
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| And this is the total product. The wings are in the create right at the back of the photo, and the canopy and some of the stock sheet and bar aluminium is up on the shelves to the right, otherwise this is the parts that we will be working with for the next 3 months. In addition to any omissions that I'm sure we will find (I already know of a few). Next up is to check off each of the parts against the packing list from VANs. A job for tomorrow....... | 
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| Spent the day inventorying all the non-paper bag items and matching up the shipping parts list with the physical parts. Quite satisfying and progress better than we expected. A full day with two people and that was the majority completed. | |
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| Spent the day inventorying the little paper brown bags with all the additional parts. Also resolved the some of the discrepancies between the packing list and what we had already been identified. | 
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| Finished result of the bag inventorying, all now stacked in boxes ready for use.
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| Completed the inventory process, all 700+ parts shipped first time and all present and correct. The VANs guys really do this part of the shipping really well. The print-out could be improved with the different sub kits and having electronic versions would be great, but that is a pipe dream as far as I can tell. | |
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| I spent a final couple of hours this evening sorting some of the various bolts and bag hardware into consolidated storage. Up until now we have kept the various brown bags separate and used them as needed. We now have some idea of what the various parts are and have started to get to a point where we need to just group all like parts together. Therefore I started the long process with just the AN nuts, bolts and washers. | 
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| Finishing up for the day I did another couple of hours working through the brown bags, I managed to sort all the remaining rivets (solid and pop) and snap bushings into the appropriate boxes. Why VANs has to include 4 CS pop rivets in a bag of 120 LP rivets (which look VERY similar) is beyond me - but normal rules apply - the VANs packers get it right, just keep looking....... | 
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| Yesterday evening Dad got all keen and we completely unpacked the remaining brown bags.
I had previously sorted most of the simple bags (ie. rivets) which reduced the total job and Dad continued this morning finishing the remaining containers in the shed.
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| Of course, after deliver then comes inventorying. Lots of little plastic bags of 'stuff'. As per usual very accurate - everything accounted for. | 
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| Had an email back from Stein (I know he was still at the Sun-n-Fun show) - lots of apologies and sounds like we are back on track. One announcement from Sun-n-Fun is the IFR (TSO'd) internal GPS for the GRT systems - I might change over to that as it was missed from the shipment - more thought needed. | |
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| Good news - the Stein order from 5 Sept finally arrived. Main item is 250' of AWG22 which I need for the trim control / signal lines to the DB9 connectors under the P1 seat. | 
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| The ACS order arrived - very good, ordered Wed 6th Dec, arrived in NZ Wed 13th Dec, and that was after me having to confirm shipping options on the Thr.... Lots of bits and things, worked through the order and confirmed everything was there, then started sorting groups of things. | 
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| Short day, but I finally got round to sorting all the screws / nuts. Time consumming process - but makes other things simpler in the long run. | 
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