Kit arrival
The empennage arrived on Thursday, February 26. Pretty quick shipping from Vans — the kit tracker estimated it would ship on 2/12 and I got the ABF Freight pickup email on 2/17. Shipping came to $947.
I was expecting a wooden crate like in the various build videos, but Vans now uses a cardboard crate on a wooden pallet for this kit. We opened it up and inventoried the whole thing Thursday night. It didn't take as long as expected, and we were only missing one bag of electrical connectors.
First weekend: vertical stabilizer
On Saturday we jumped right in on the first section: the vertical stabilizer. I cut, drilled, and fit everything together while Shelby deburred. We made a couple of small learning mistakes on the first few pieces and may replace them — still debating. Some of our initial deburring was too aggressive on the rudder mounts (we've already refined that technique), and we accidentally nicked a long piece of metal when deburring it into a different grinding wheel. That other wheel has since been removed.
Overall our confidence grew as we worked through the vertical stabilizer and I think it's turning out pretty good. Between Saturday and Sunday we both put in around 11 hours each. We ended the weekend with all of the vertical stabilizer parts primed and curing for assembly. I also fit and drilled the rudder pieces, which are currently cleco'd in place. Next step is getting those ready for priming too.
Priming notes
Priming went okay. Not enough paint was coming out of the gun, even with the flow completely open. It's going to take some fine-tuning, but I'm sure we'll figure it out.
Photos
