Well, moving day is finally here. A couple of weeks ago, just before my 2-week jaunt back to the States, I had a rep from the shipping company come out and measure all my stuff, including all the airplane components, to figure out what kind of crates would need to be constructed.
I was fairly impressed when the moving truck showed up today with 3 large crates specifically for the major Long-EZ components. I have to tell you I was a bit concerned that the military was going have a conniption over my aircraft project. Of course that’s one reason why I built all my components to the minimum length I could, and didn’t mount the winglets to the wings, etc. The first large crate was for the fuselage, which much to my pleasure was large enough so that I could keep the firewall mounted onto the longerons (ensuring that the back end of the fuselage didn’t endure any undue stress).
The second crate was a smaller, longer crate for both the Canard & CS spar. This too had plenty of room to allow for lots of overpacking to keep these guys from rubbing holes in each on the boat ride back to the US.
The last crate was the mo-jamma! Although I had specifically requested that this guy be constructed so the wings would be crated vertically & leading edge (LE) down, it was constructed so the wings would be horizontal, but plenty big enough to allow for a lot of extra padding between the wings. Also, although the wings would be shipped and stored horizontally, I figured since they were built last summer that they’ve had nearly an entire year to cure in the correct position/LE down to lock in their shape, so I’m not too concerned about them warping. In fact, I was thinking about this in regards of flying Long-EZs: I don’t hear stories about EZ drivers removing their wings and storing them LE down when not using the airplane! Nope, the wings pretty much stay attached to the CS spar and seam to do just fine without any major warpage!
So, here are the pics of the wrapping, packing, crating & shipping of Long-EZ 916WP:
One thing I want to point out is that I was with these these guys the whole time that they were packing up my LEZ components, then when we finished prepping each part for crating I would sprint up 3 flights of stairs to take a picture or two, then run back down to work the next piece, sprinting back up the stairs in an attempt to get good shots of all these parts getting packed up & crated as part of documenting my build.
