Home At Last

I made it back from Indiana Tuesday evening. The task of moving the partially completed Sling 4 kit took me across eight states, several rain storms, heavy crosswinds, a blizzard during the entire New Mexico leg, and mountainous snow driving over half of Arizona.

The packing job wonderfully executed by the seller, his brother, a former co-builder, and me proved worth the 4 hours it took to complete. Nothing in the truck moved despite the endlessly horrific road conditions, bouncing around, and downright airborne-launching potholes and other imperfections in these great interstates. What a fantastic way to spend New Year's Eve and the first day of the new year.

When I return to work on Monday and people ask, "How was you New Year's?", I'm sure I'll smile, even chuckle a bit, and reply, "Oh, you know! I did the usual stuff."

Today I unloaded most of the truck and have been inventorying the kit items. Unfortunately, due to the previous inventory and out-of-order kit building, parts are scattered around everywhere. It seems like the only part that's in its place is the canopy cover (large box pictured above). There are a lot of parts that have been prepped and primered for installation (I assume somewhere in the fuselage) without part number tags. These are going to be challenging to reconcile.

Also, the original builder noted some missing items. I've come across some of the originally noted items, as if they were shipped at a later date. Other items don't appear to have been replaced and I'm hoping won't be a hassle to get TAF to replace them since they were not present in the original shipping.

I have several more days of inventory and finding a place to store pieces I'm either not working on or have completed. It was good that the original builder had space to order the entire airframe. I was only planning on ordering one or two kits at a time because I don't have the space. Not everything always goes according to plan.