IT’S HERE! IT’S HERE!
I’m just a little excited for the fuselage to be delivered. Communication from VANS leaves a bit to be desired. They sent all the paperwork with a crate date of Feb 18th so I was still under the impression that my date had not slipped. But when I didn’t hear anything from them by Feb 28th, I sent a nice message asking if they could send me the shipping info. That’s when I find out that they were really busy getting these orders out and mine hadn’t been started yet. Maybe another week or two at that point.
Luckily I did get notified on March 5th that my crate was ready for pickup by the shipper. I was able to track it and it was scheduled for delivery on March 15th. (Small note, I was actually charged less for the shipping than what VANS indicated on their paperwork. Not that I’m going to argue!)
Truck arrived around 4pm and was able to easily get the crate offloaded. Shipping dimensions were spot on so I was able to clear sufficient space to put it in the garage while I unboxed everything. Pleasantly surprised that I have NO DAMAGE on my crate this time.
My goal was to get the cabin top out of the box and hung from the ceiling as well as getting the crate broken down as much as possible as quickly as possible. (I really only had Friday as I had lots of family obligations for Sat and Sunday!)
While the kids played outside, I easily unpacked most of the items in the crate. Had to get some assistance from my wife to remove the cabin top, then get it in position to lift using our bicycle hoists. Not perfect, but secure enough for a few months. Bikes are stored in the shed as we really weren’t using them much anyway.
Ended up taking another day off mid-week to inventory everything and store everything in the garage. I’ll say this, VANS did a great job on packing the kit and all the sub-components. Nothing was damaged or poorly packed, and I was only missing three items. (Two ribs and one nut). HUGH improvement on what was missing from previous kits.