Inventory, Bent Panels Found

27 Apr 2006: 2 of us, 3 hours each.


Today we did a detailed inventory of all but the numerous subkits. Everything was there, but we did find two panels that appear to have been slightly bent in the shipment. These are the left and right F-7105B outboard sub-panels. These parts were in the large cardboard box, lying together on top of several other parts.

As you can see from the photos, there is about a 1" deflection, uniformly across them both. This corresponds to the way they were laying across the material that was underlying them in the box. Since there is no "fence" along the edge with the largest bend, we can't see how we could flute them to restore their flatness. Drawing 24 shows a slight bend across the bottom of these panels in Section A-A, but it appears to be opposite to the way the F-7105B right subpanel that we received is bent.

We did contact Van's about this, and sent them photos, and their response was "the[y] will be just fine. When you get to the point that you install them you will make a bend across the bottom and that will help straiten[sic] them out." While we agreed that this would probably work, we would have preferred to have Van's send us a set that were straight.