Tonight was inventory time. I was able to get about 90% of the inventory completed, with only a few bits of the smaller bags of hardware left. I still need to come up with some sort of organization for all these bits of hardware and small pieces of kit. Surprisingly, it looks like the only thing that was left out of my kit was the pre-fabbed fuel pickup tube w/screen. The flop tube for the other tank was shipped, but I think they forgot to toss in the other fuel pickup I ordered extra. It’s only about $16.50, so I am hoping Van’s doesn’t give me a hard time about sending it to me. I’ll hold off on reporting it until I get all these other little hardware bags done since its possible it could be tucked in there somewhere.
I uncrated all the parts in the garage, so I moved them over to the shop as I counted them off on the inventory. I made sure that as I checked the off my list I did a thorough inspection for damage. So far, everything is looking great. A testament to how well Van’s crates these things up. The first things I inventoried were the fiberglass wingtips and landing light lenses. I wanted to put them on the top shelf with the tail kit fiberglass parts so they would be protected from shop damage. Everything fit nicely on the top shelf:
The next things I wanted to tackle was the longerons and other long bits of aluminum angle. The wings ship with two 15′ pieces of angle used for the longerons. I actually added an additional 2 longerons to be safe, and there is also two 12′ and two 9′ pieces of angle that we wont use until the fuselage. So, I decided the safest place for these things were in the rafters of my shop, that way they’d be tucked up and out of the way and could lay flat. I also added a piece of 2×4 between the two longest rafters to help give the aluminum angle some more support, and I am pretty happy with it:
I also ordered several other pieces of angle aluminum that was hard to find at the local shops, and the wings ship with some other long bits of metal, like the piano hinges that need to be store flat and safe. I also ordered 6 extra 6′ lengths of piano hinge to mount my wing tips, so I had to think of something. Luckily, I had some utility hooks laying around that were looking for a job, and they seemed like they would suit the purpose….so to work they went:
The rest of the parts, I just neatly tucked away on my shelves with their part number stickers facing up. I tried to organize them by their section (ailerons, flaps, tanks, etc) so that all the parts are there together. Once I have my shop all inventoried and the wing stands mounted, I’ll likely reposition the shelves anyways. For now, I just used the shelves as the place to put parts that were inspected and inventoried. After about 3.5 hours of work, I decided to call it quits. I still have to inventory the parts in the aileron mounting bag, the stall warner bag and the SB bag, so I took them upstairs to work on the kitchen table for that. I’m going to think up some sort of organization system for all this small hardware to make it easier to stow and grab when needed.
Heres the album for tonights work:
Link to Google Photos Album: https://goo.gl/photos/zGDHwqXryWArQn3z7
Hours Worked: 3.5