The parts to the Rans S-20 Raven arrived at the West Desert Airport on Wednesday February 24th. I was in Las Vegas at a director conference for my company when it arrived. The boys and I went and saw the plane parts Saturday morning February 30, 2015 when I got back from my trip.

When we arrived the front of the crate had been removed by airport workers to assure that there was no damage to the parts in shipping. So when we walked into the hangar we were immediately able to see all the parts and pieces still in the boxes.

To be honest, when we first arrived that morning we really didn’t know what to do so we mostly walked around it and picked up pieces and just took it all in. Porter had a basketball game so we had to leave to get him to his game. But before we left 4 Rans airplanes taxied out of their hangars and took off for a trip. So it was fun to see and hear what our airplane would soon become.

Later that evening, after Porter’s game (they did great, they went undefeated this season), we drove back to the hangar and started checking off inventory to make sure we had all the parts. We were able to inventory all the large parts (wheels, panels, rods, cables, etc.) that night before we left.

In the above picture the airplane fuselage is upside down in the box with the tail of the plane behind Eli.

Below: We took one large and heavy box home so we could finish the inventory process at home. We discovered this box held a lot of different parts inside. You will see the, spread all over out work bench below.

The rest of this week we have spent counting screws, whiz bangs, rivets, nuts, bolts, and bamboozles to make sure we received everything. Rans does a great job labeling and separating everything. So far we have only found 1 missing screw in a bag of 25, which is amazing considering the number of parts. One tip we did learn after a little while is to use the priority number instead of the part number since the priority numbers are in order and their are pages and pages and pages of parts. That discovery sped things up a lot!

Here we are in our garage at home counting parts and checking off the inventory sheet: 

  
 Checking off the parts was pretty fun. We were amazed at how light some of the large aluminum pieces were. And it was fun to see things that we recognized like a door handle, a knob, or the control stick handle. I would read the priority number and give the count, Porter would find the number and use a ruler to make sure he was looking at the right line and record how many we had, and Eli would sort the parts into boxes. Each box held 100 priority numbers. Though some boxes held more than 100 priority numbers since some priority numbers go into decimals like 450.1. This is going to be an awesome learning experience and something we can be totally proud of. Definitely a lasting memory.

One last group shot for the history books.