9 Sept 05 - Unloading a RV-10 QB

I've been shooting email back and forth with Brian Sutherland for awhile - Brian's a RV-10 builder up in Nashville, TN, and both of us went through the Alexander Technical Center's empennage building program to jumpstart our airplanes. Brian's through the empennage and tailcone of what will eventually be N104BS, and today was the day that the Quickbuild wings and fuselage showed up. Also the finish kit showed up too, just for good measure.

Brian needed a hand unloading stuff, so it seemed that a road trip to Nashville was in order. The kit was being delivered by Partain Transport, which I was also curious to see - my QB kit was delivered before this was an option, and I was interested to see if this was actually easier to unload, as Tony Partain seems to claim it is. Long story short: yeah, he's pretty much right, and if you're getting a QB kit delivered and this is an option, do it. Easier, less expensive (no crating charges) and you save lots of time not having to dork around with getting crates out of the shop.

Oh - also Brian has a website documenting his progress, too, and if you want more information about his project, it's not a bad idea to go visit it.

Progress Brian's made so far: empennage and tailcone.	View of the shop, before delivery: lots of stuff is going to have to fit in the shop.
Inside the truck: wings, and the fuselage and finish kit box are behind the canopy.	Unloading a wing . . .
. . . and the other wing.	Wings in the cradle. You will really want to have a wing cradle already built if you have your kit delivered in this way . . . there is no way to just leave it in the box, as there is no box.
Four people can move the fuselage.	Fuselage in its new home . . . doesn't take a lot of imagination to see how it'll fit to the tailcone.
Same thing, different angle - tailcone and fuselage.	Instrument panel area/forward fuselage.
View of the truck/shop, and that crate is the box for the finish kit.	Brian with the project!

A few basic observations . . .

• We pretty much unloaded this with four people, and the fuselage is not all that bad to move with four people. The finish kit, however, is a pain in the rear, and as soon as we got it out of the truck, we put it on the ground and moved the stuff inside it into the shop rather than try to continue moving the whole crate around.
  
  
• After unloading one of these things crated, this was much easier. I think this really says something, as the crated one was a -7A and the uncrated one was a -10 and it was still easier in that it took less people a smaller amount of time. If I was starting a QB kit now, I would do it this way. Sorry to keep harping on this, but unloading a crated kit is more of a pain in the rear, as you can see. Trust me, this is better.
  
  
• I know this observation has been made by lots of people before, but it bears repeating: the -10 is a big airplane. After working on a -7A for a year, this thing looks massive.
  
  
• This isn't particularly profound, but if you're going to build one of these things, you probably want a large shop. I'm pretty convinced that we could not fit a -10 into the place that we're building a -7A.

Back to the miscellaneous page.