Questions for outside USA/Canada guys.

What company have you used to ship Van's kit to your country? Do you have any tip to share?

I also ask you to tell us the country you are from.

I am from Brazil.


Rafael Mendes

Piloto.Mendes said:

What company have you used to ship Van's kit to your country? Do you have any tip to share?

I also ask you to tell us the country you are from.

I am from Brazil.


Rafael Mendes

Click to expand...

If you want everything in prime condition, travel to Aurora OR, build your plane there, then fly the pieces home yourself

I'm joking of course, but it not that far from the truth. The problem is that there are 5 crates. These crates are stuffed in and out of containers together with all kinds of other stuff. The chance of at least one crate being damage is rather large. When they opened "my" container in Oslo, one crate was damaged and one crate was laying upside down.

Van's will handle all the shipping and insurance. I guess you can do it yourself, but from what I have heard it is very difficult to get reasonable rates if you do not know the shipping business.

Get own container

When I got my RV 8 QB shipped to Denmark it came in 5 big boxes: fuse, wings, finish, engine and prop. You could tell that especially the wings had taken some real beating and when I opened the wingbox for inspection the spars had been damaged. Both the spars had serious scratches from the screws that normally hold the wings in place. Most likely the wings had been dropped or put down hard UPSIDE DOWN so the screws snapped and scratched the bolt holes and the trailing edge had been bent ! The QB wing box is tall and unstable so if somebody lifts it wrong or push it by accident it will fall onto the side and probably damage the wings inside. Since an RV quick build with engine will fill up most of a container anyway there is not much to save from not getting your own container. By getting your own you will avoid all the on- and offloading at the hubs. I sure wish that I had paid the 500 $ extra and avoid all this trouble!

______
Regards
Christian Thygesen
Denmark
RV-8 QB - status: firewall forward

To France

Hello,

I only have the first three parts of the kit (empennage, wings anf fuselage). I had empennage and wings shipped together and fuselage one year later.
I had Vans make quotes for sea and air freight, they went with Bax Global. Air freight was only slightly more expensive.
So I had all the boxes delivered by air freight, all the paper work was send ahead to Vans to be included in the boxes and Bax did all the paperwork in Paris with french customs.
The nice thing with airfreight is that Vans told me the boxes were gone on Monday and they arrived Friday at home. One box was a bit damaged but not the parts inside.

I too had my wing kit air freighted by Bax Global. they were quick, very reasonably priced, and it arrived in the UK in perfect condition.

My fuselage kit is due to ship next week, so I expect to use Bax again.