Wing Kit Arrived!

Yesterday was a big day with the long awaited (9 months since original deposit) of my RV-15 Wing Kit (except for the spars, but they should arrive in about a month or so.)  Van's shipped via a company named ABF.  ABF called me the other day and set up a delivery for Friday May 8th.  Then the status page for the order said May 11th.  I called and they confirmed the 11th.  I pointed out they hadn't notified me about the change, and that the 11th wouldn't work for me.  They said 'OK' and said they'd drop it off on the 8th.  no apologies or anything.  Weird. 

OK, so the delivery window was from 8am to 8pm.  Because I never procrastinate, the garage was completely cleaned and organized and ready for the deliver.  Not.  So at 8am I check the status page (loading) and got to work in the garage.   By noon, I had converted a garage w/ nearly 3 years of cruft & debris into an acceptable and clean workshop.  

Clean & Ready Workshop

Around 1pm, the status page finally said 'out for delivery' and I started to trust them that they would deliver and not make me wait until next week.   Around 4:30, the truck showed up.  The driver cursed that they didn't give him the right equipment to unload it properly so I enlisted my neighbor, Kevin, and his friend and the 4 of us eventually manhandled the crates into the workshop.

Wing kit boxes in the workshop

main box, before opening

Main box

I tackled the main box first. I had to drive out to the hangar to get a Dremel tool to cut the metal straps and grabbed my drill press, band saw, grinder and a bunch of loose/small tools.  I had put off getting tools until the garage had been cleaned and converted in order to not add to the clutter and further drive myself crazy.  I spent about 2 hrs excavating a phenomenal amount of crushed brown wrapping paper out of the box to get to the result you see above.  I'll need to figure out how to package the paper so it can be picked up for recycling, and then I'll tackle the inventory.  BTW, I have 30 days to report any discrepancies for free remediation & shipping.  

10th Condition Inspection is complete

 I fetched the RV-12 back home today.  Ed flew me up in the Cirrus.  Nice flight, except for a 20-30 kt headwind.  It was surprisingly smooth. (Cue the violins playing minor key...).   We arrived at Burlington WI just before noon,  I got an excellent briefing on the things they had found.  There were about a dozen issues that many mechanics would have ignored or not even bothered to document, but Advanced Powerplant Solutions really did a great job capturing those little things and debriefing me about them.   Notice that I haven't talked about anything major.  That's because there weren't any! 😁

N76012 inside APS's hangar

Here she is, buried deep inside APS's hangar.  It took them 5 minutes to get her out and put the other planes back in. Their hangar is spotless.  I really felt comfortable with them working on her.

Top View of Engine w/o Shroud

When Van's designed the original RV-12, they appeared to have been very concerned about cooling.  Back in Feb 2015 I spent a fair amount of effort pulling lots of accessories off of the engine and installing a fiberglass shroud that directed ram air over the fins of the cylinders.  It was ugly and interfered with several maintenance actions and I never liked it.  About a year ago, Vans published a letter that amounted to "the shroud doesn't do anything.  You can remove it if you want."  I want.   It was removed by APS and the above picture shows the engine w/o the shroud.  Check out Feb 2015, sections 46-05, --06 and -07 for comparison. 

If all goes well, I should get my first crate from Vans with the RV-15 wing kit!

Garage -> Building Space

 I've been slowly creeping up on the actual conversion of the garage into the building space for the -15, mostly because it means that Lada & I will not be able to park inside until the project is moved out to the airport and I'd like to minimize her inconvenience.  Having said that, I cleaned off an old, unused desk that's been gathering dust & junk and turned it into a usable desk.  I moved a computer that I bought about 5 years ago to be a high end flight simulator, but I simply never got into simulated flight.  For one, I dislike the Windows operating systems and could never properly configure all of the myriads of drivers and other files to make everything work.  Secondly, I just don't enjoy 'flying' a simulator.  I suppose I'm too dependent upon the noise and accelerations to like just flying what I see on the screen.   On the other hand, the giant screens will be great for looking at the plans in large, highly magnified detail.

The kit is supposed to arrive the day after tomorrow ('overmorrow' back when that was a word in common use.)  I'll spend all Friday actually evicting the cars and moving benches, etc and we'll be ready to start inventory.

On the RV-12 front, I received the expected message on Monday that the plane was ready for pickup.  What I wasn't expecting was the invoice was about double what I had guessed -- over $8800.   For "nothing major", that's certainly a lot of work & parts.    Oddly enough, I'm glad that it is what it is.  This indirectly validates that there were items I wasn't attending to and now I feel good about flying her for another 10 years.

Wing kit (partial) shipped!

 Yesterday I received several email from Van's and a trucking company, APS.   It appears that my partial wing kit has actually been crated and shipped.   Van's uses their invoices to document everything, so I had a bit of consternation when I saw another invoice for $$$$, but then noticed the balance due was $0 and there was a line of backordered parts.  I haven't had time to download the plans and attach names to the backordered parts, but I know that the main spars are the big items.   I'll hopefully get that done tomorrow afternoon.

A thread on VAF discussed bucking rivets and I'm a bit confused.  I was under the impression that the plane was designed to be built using only pulled (pop) rivets or squeezed rivets.  I'll have to look into that as I have exactly 1 hour of training in bucking rivets and that was ~15 years ago.

On the RV-12 front, it was nearly ready when I chatted with the shop on Wednesday the 29th.   The person on the phone was not the A&P working on the plane, but thought it would be ready sometime today.  I'm guessing that it'll be Monday or Tuesday.   Logistically, that's fine with me because I don't have time off to go get it until Thursday and/or Friday.   As always, that's going to be weather dependent.  In addition, that's also my estimated window of when the wing kit will arrive.   I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Progress!

 Well.  I finally have something positive to report.    It's been 11 days since I paid the remaining wing kit balance.  I had several email exchanges with the Kit Sales department and after being told "5-10 days after payment" I finally sent a very blunt email to Accounts Receivable and left a similar blunt email.

Good afternoon,

    The operator suggested this followup email to a voice mail I left a few minutes ago.
    I wish to know if you received my payment of $8,242.50 made on 4/17/26.   The transaction reply from
 mail.authorize.net is below.  I made a payment of $3150 on the same day for the empennage kit and received a receipt on 4/20, but I never received a receipt for the $8K to be applied to the balance due of the wing kit.
    My posted kit shipment date was last week, on the 21st.  That was last updated over a month ago.   I have had several email threads with Kit Sales and it appears that they are not able to move forward with providing me an updated shipping estimate until they know that the wing kit is fully paid.
    I am very frustrated by the lack of communication in this process and would greatly appreciate being updated as to what is going on with my order and my payment.  
    If you have not received the payment in question, how do I go about getting it refunded from mail.authorize.net so I may remunerate it to you via a different route? 

Thank you for any available information,
-dbh

Well, the letter and/or voice mail seems to have done the trick.  In the morning I received the receipt along with a notation that the wing kit has been paid in full.  This evening I got a phone call (yes, a live person actually spoke to me) wherein she briefly mentioned the email and then proceeded to ask if Thursday (day after tomorrow) would be acceptable for them to ship my partial kit. "Yes." 

She estimated that it would be about 7 days in transit.   If so, that might not work well with my hope to recover the RV-12 from Wisconsin, but if so, I'll figure it out.

As a little nice addition, someone posted a render of the RV-15 tail feathers.   They look nice.

Still waiting...

So, it's been a week since I paid the final amount due for the wings and paid for the tail section.  Over the last few days I've received electronic receipts for the payments and today an invoice applying the tail kit payment to the actual order of a tail kit.  I have not heard anything about the wing kit.   The last letter stated "once that payment has been received and processed, your kit should be shipped in 5-10 days."   I'm beginning to suspect that 'received' means that it hit their bank but 'processed' means that someone has made an association between the influx of cash and a specific order.  In other words, they haven't processed it yet so the "5-10 days" probably hasn't started yet.

In other news, the RV-12 is getting its first condition inspection by someone other than me.   It's been 10 years of flying and I didn't feel up to doing all of the labor to perform the Rotax mandated 5-year replacement of all of the rubber components in the engine.  In addition, I'm a subscriber to Mike Busch's philosophy that strict time-based replacements often induce more maintenance failures than they prevent.  That's especially true for me with respect to pulling parts off the engine that I haven't ever touched since building.    The other reason I hired a professional shop is that I want someone else to inspect her for me because I'm not a professional A&P and I don't know what I don't know I'm looking at.   I really want a professional 2nd opinion of the condition of my plane with respect to its being in condition for safe operation.

Here she is in the hangar at Burlington Municipal Airport, Wisconsin (KBUU).   Hopefully I'll have 8 hours off during good weather to go get her when it's done.

I also overcame a mental roadblock of 'paralysis by analysis' with respect to migrating my tools from the hangar to the garage. I kept getting mentally stalled by not being able to figure out which tools to move and where to store things until I knew when the wing kit was going to arrive.  I started the process by realizing that it was OK to buy a new rolling tool cart rather than move the one I have.  Now I can start cleaning up loose tools in the garage and put them into the tool cart.  That will free up some storage racks in the garage which I can ...  You get the picture.    I find that once I get something started, I typically can keep up good momentum.   Here's the first picture of the modification of the garage; said new rolling tool cart, a recycled kitchen table and a migrated work table from the hangar.

Another Delay, another Kit ordered

Well, it looks like I'm was almost back into the waiting game.  I just got a letter from Van's that they were not going to ship my wing kit next week.   One of the key items--the main wing spars--have been problematic for them to obtain.  Today, they got their shipment of spars and found them non-airworthy.   From their letter...

WHAT HAPPENED

A large batch of RV-15 spar webs were returned from the anodizing process with both cosmetic and structural defects that make them unsuitable for use in your airframe. We rejected the entire affected lot.  

The letter went on to say that I have the option of getting my partial kit shipped next week and the spars "later", but it will cost me about an additional $700 in shipping.  On the other hand, they are taking orders for Tail Kits and are optimistic that those will start shipping "in May" at a rate of 2/day.  They explicitly stated that it was possible that Tail Kits might hit the door prior to complete Wing Kits.

I just ordered the Tail Kit (by pulling funds from the recently opened HELOC) and will wait to see when they publish an estimated shipping date, and possibly an updated ship date for the wing kit.  I doubt the latter, as they said that they're not even sure when they're going to get another batch of wing spars (from a different provider.)

While I was typing this entry, I was been debating what to do with my options for the wing kit.  I finally realized that I want to get going on this project since I've been waiting ever since July of last year.  I'll spend the $700 for the spar shipment when it's ready.   There's a reasonable amount of work that can be done w/o the spars (e.g., inventory, demurring, assembly of the ailerons and flaps) while waiting for the spars.  If needed, I'll work on the tail kit if the spars still are delayed excessively (which I doubt.)

I sent the letter saying that I want the partial kit option.  I explicitly pointed out that I have yet to receive my request for final payment and they said to go ahead, so I've made both payments and will hopefully have my partial wing kit within a week or so.

Let's get this project going!