Our Empennage/Tailcone kit order was originally submitted on August 14th and processed the next day by Van’s Aircraft. We were told to expect a mid-September shipping date. Lead times were a little longer than normal for the kit because the RV-12iS was such a popular hit at Oshkosh this year (it was the “One Week Wonder,” built in seven days at the event).
The kit was crated and shipped the week of August 27, a few weeks earlier than expected. For those who aren’t familiar with how this works: Van’s Aircraft fabricates and/or stocks the kit components at their factory. When someone orders a kit, they make sure they have all (or at least most) of the kit parts, then they package it up into a wooden crate that’s shipped via freight. A few parts were backordered, so they will ship separately later to complete the kit. In the meantime, we would be able to get started on the pieces we received in the first shipment.
With Labor Day causing some expected shipping delays, we received our RV-12 empennage kit crate on September 5, 2018. FedEx Freight did a great job at getting the crate into the garage. Some minor (forklift?) damage on the outside of the box turned out to be a non-issue, as huge boxes of rivets (12,500!) were on the other side.
Not the best of pictures, but I had to get back to work after accepting the delivery. The box was about 220 lbs, so kudos to a coworker who’s also building a Van’s RV-14 for helping me out.
We got straight to inventorying the parts that night – probably about 80% of them!
Finished the inventory and part shelving two days later. Here’s some of them, complete with a bit of garage clutter!
We have a bit of reading to do before starting the build process, but we’re off to a decent start!
RV-12iS Build 