We had two days of pretty uninterrupted work, and attacked the vertical stabilizer, even though we are missing all of its backordered ribs. That still left plenty to work on. Paul Mantegna and Kacy Anderson (builders of RV-7 N69ER) gave expert assistance, and kept us out of too much trouble! Paul is an EAA technical adviser. Mary learned a lot of new skills (deburring, dimpling, etching, clecoing) and was a great help! At the end of the weekend, we have a mostly complete vertical stabilizer, though it needs probably another full day of work when the ribs arrive. Next up is the rudder. Mary and I just inventoried those parts, and found we have everything, except the top rib! Damn! But I think it will keep us busy for a while, anyway. A longer term concern is that our quick-build wing kit, which had been scheduled to arrive in Feb-March 2024, is now showing a lead-time of May 2024 - Feb 2025! That means we might have a year delay waiting for parts! And we haven’t yet ordered the QB Fuselage kit, which is suddenly showing a lead-time of 18+ months. We intend to call Van’s tomorrow and ask about what happens if we switch to regular instead of QB kits, or maybe purchase an unstarted kit from someone else.

Time spent: 15hr