On a Wing and a Prayer (and a Fuselage)

Friday Afteroon I met Richard at his place in order to pick up the Wings and the Fuselage for his plane. I arrived there about 1PM, and we then took a 2 Ton truck over to Botany to the docks. Over at the Docks, it is assumed that you know what you need to do. For instance the directions are given in street addresses, but the warehouses are marked with dock numbers. This does not make things easy to use.

It took a little while to work out where we needed to go to get the paperwork signed off. The guy asked if we had a truck – we did not look like the normal truckies with the compulsory vests. The guy was relieved that we did have a flatbed, and commented that we would be shocked at what people have done – stupid things with Corollas.

I was rather concerned with the forklift driver. Apart from the fact that it looked like he had been in one too many bar room brawls, I was not inspired when he started picked up the four boxes in one hit with the fork and started moving. This would not have been so bad if the boxes had weighed less than 400 kG, or if the value was less than A$20K in finely machined aluminium.

With the top box being about 4.2m long, and about 30cm x 30cm containing with wing spans, I was concerned. Particularly when it is realised that this was on top of a box that was no wider than 1m, and that was on another couple of boxes. The fork driver did not need anyone to steady the box, but I did anyway. I am not stupid.

It was good once we got the items on the truck. Tieing them down was easy, but the lack of some beams on some of the items did give come concern. Three or four 2×2’s were removed from the top and bottom of some of the crates reducing the structural integrity, but things were fine.

The biggest crate was not in immaculate condition. It had a gash about 6″ wide and 3″ high thanks to a fork prong. Somehow thanks to the aim of the driver and the packaging from Vans, no damage was done to the contents.

Coming home was a bit easier than getting there thanks to Richard working out that first gear on the truck was optional. In fact in most cases it was easier not to use first. Once we got the parts back, the two of us were able to get all the boxes into his garage without too many issues. One of the boxes was heavy enough that we did it in two parts – Got one edge off the truck, and sitting on masonite. Then we worked on the other end, and slid it. Easy. What you need to remember is that the boxes were probably between 75 and 150 kG each.

Once we got the truck out of the driveway we started opening the boxes. I was going to say that I have never seen so much paper in my life. This is not quite right. But it was close. Since the aircraft parts are expensive they are well packaged. We managed to fill up at least five 204l “Otto” bins with butchers paper. It did its job well as could be seen by no parts being problem or damaged – even when someone turned the box over to remove the supports described below.

My late friday night we had managed to empty three of the boxes, which were dumped onto the truck for delivery to Richard’s father for woodworking practice. Saturday after we returned the truck we put casters on the last box and used it for storage.

It took me a while to work this out, but I was actually shocked a bit by the ammount of work involved. Overwealmed I think is the right word. How else would you describe being sent probably 10-15,000 rivets?

Getting most of the box