Today marks the beginning of another Van’s RV-8 … Harmon Rocket II … F1 Rocket and this is the unboxing of the new parts.
For more details about the evolution of an RV-8 tail kit to an F1 Rocket check out my post that answers “What is a Rocket?”
RV-8 Tail Kit – Unboxing
The Van’s RV-8 tail kit comes in 2 boxes as you can see in the picture below. If you happen to be wondering about the mess, I was in the midst of packing up my house and getting ready to move across the country for a new job that I was starting in the new year. Not only that, but it also didn’t stop me from starting up a third homebuilt plane project which you can see part of on the dining room table in the background. For that project I was building wing ribs for a Staaken Z-21 Flitzer.
One of the best things about receiving the RV-8 tail kit boxes is the “Fragile High Dollar Aircraft Parts” labels.
Van’s sure knows how to pack the parts for shipment. The smaller box contains all the ribs, composite tips, lead weights, hardware etc. These parts are all bundled and wrapped with paper to prevent damage. The larger box contained the outer skin surfaces, spars and stiffeners for the empennage, as seen in the lower picture. All these parts are very tightly packed together and I have no idea what kind of “Duct Tape” Van’s uses but this stuff is TOUGH!! One word of advice, be careful pulling it off because it will want to pull the blue protective film off the aluminum.
My wife / co-adventurer Jo-Anne was also very excited about our new acquisition of parts. Look at that big smile!
Getting the spars and stiffeners unwrapped.
Please comment, I love to hear from my readers. Thanks again for coming along for this ride, you make my work worthwhile.
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