I haven’t had an update for more than a month, because I am still waiting for my next batch of parts to arrive. Those were supposed to be the quick-build wing and fuselage. In late February, Van’s kit sales people told me to expect both of them to ship between March 26-28. Very specific dates. And then about two weeks later, the kit status website pops up with new shipping dates, indicating 9/21/2025 for the QB fuselage and 10/30/2025 for the QB wing. WTF? So in early March, I call the Van’s kit sales number, and get the kit sales manager (I think) on the phone. I tell him that I hope there was a mistake, because they told me my shipment was imminent, and now they are indicating another 6 and 7 month delay. But there was no mistake. And no explanation for the further delay, other than “we gave you the wrong dates”. I was furious. I had already started cutting back my CFI work schedule, in anticipation of getting really busy with building in April. And I also ordered and received about $6000 worth of avionics parts to install in the wing and fuse. I sent a Facebook message to the COO of Van’s expressing my frustration, and to his credit, he called me right back. I wanted to know the cause of the delays, and see if anything could be done, including perhaps switching from a QB order to a standard order, so that I could get working on something again (it has been about 6 months since I’ve had any aircraft parts to work on!) I had a couple phone calls with him. They are sticking with the policy of no switching from QB to standard kits. He explained that for pre-bankruptcy orders like mine, the deposits I paid are essentially lost and tied up in bankruptcy. So Van’s has to break even or better when they fill the order, and they can’t do that with a standard kit price when they credit the customer for the larger (lost) QB deposit. However, because of some poor record-keeping on their part, they think I underpaid my fuselage deposit, and they offered me the option to switch to standard kits as a result of this. (This is because I accidentally ordered the standard fuselage kit and paid a smaller deposit initially, but then corrected it the same day and paid an additional amount for the QB deposit. But, they lost track of this!). Really I think he was just looking for an excuse to say OK to my request, without allowing everybody else to do it also. So, I appreciate the offer to switch to standard kit(s), but he says I would have to live with the standard kit lead time of about 26 weeks. That makes the offer mostly useless, since my QBs are scheduled to be ready in that same time frame. I have looked into the possibility of buying or borrowing someone else’s standard kit(s), and replacing with a standard kit that I would receive 26 weeks from now, but that is a lot of logistics hassle, and probably doesn’t save me any calendar time to completion anyway. So, I am resigned to waiting until Sep/Oct timeframe for my QB wing and fuse, hopeful that there won’t be even more delays. The COO says he and the team are now highly confident that they can meet or beat that schedule. I’ll have to take his word for it. I never got a good explanation for the delays to my orders, just some talk about how the LCP remediation of QB kits bogged them down for longer than expected. So, with extreme frustration, I am now trying to figure out if there is anything else I can do to make forward progress in the next 6 months. Ironically, I already have the firewall-forward kit (I ordered it last November because Van’s said it had a 1-year lead-time, and then I received it less than 2 months later!). So, maybe there is some sheet metal work I can do on it, like prop-spinner stuff and maybe some baffle stuff. Another possibility is to build my instrument panel, instead of buying a plug-and-play panel. But I’m in a holding pattern on that, since most people expect Garmin to announce an upgraded experimental system in the spring for summer of this year. So, back to flight instructing and waiting…