Next road trip and other dribble

Today I leave for Dayton.

Tomorrow the FAA arrives to inspect and issue the airworthiness certificate for a new Merlin with a 582 installed. Then I will test fly and ship. This one is going to Saudi Arabia.

Friday morning the next container arrives with 4 Merlin kits and one set of 1450 amphibious floats. Our hangar will be overflowing.

I will be in Dayton all week working on build programs. Then the week after is the road trip to the Mt. Vernon show 7-9 September. Then a Merlin on display there will continue to its’ new owner in Wisconsin. But he will have to wait until the Packer game is over on Sunday.

Then I return to Mt. Vernon to collect the Merlin Lite and bring it back to Dayton. Then I will take it to Florida to continue the flight test program.

In Vtwin news our dedicated production run of engines built to Aeromarine specifications was finished last week and we are now shipping these engines direct to customers. Our 2nd batch of reduction drives is in stock now and we will simply add some hardware and UPS to our Vtwin customers. Plus the first Vtwin Merlin cowl will be produced next week. The custom radiator and exhaust are both done as well. Now we just need to make a bunch to complete the firewall forward BOM and deliver the entire lot to our builders.

Shipping Vtwins direct by air from our Shanghai fulfilment center

Avionics is now the elephant in the room. I am getting a lot of components in stock but some items have as much as a 5 month backlog due to the microchip shortages. Plan ahead!

Container #3 is now full. I will inspect the Merlin kits on 29 September and ship in October if all is in order. I hope to have a lot of Vtwin firewall forward packages shipped in this container as well.

Container #4 should have 2 Merlin Lites in it. Electric and gas. But that depends on the flight test program that we will conduct in the Czech Republic. We plan to have both aircraft finished together for side-by-side flying and comparisons.

And finally something noteworthy. The recent Dan Johnson video from Oshkosh as posted: https://bydanjohnson.com/video-bonanza-despite-covid-and-distance-fresh-light-aircraft-videos-continue-to-arrive/?fbclid=IwAR2xQ9j2zECD8CGXbYF8teMyU9y3zS8uu2vEms75R9oX8oiah8DfwzI4eyY

Or directly on Youtube: https://youtu.be/Gaah_1WBViU

And no, the DEPOD is not going to be available anytime soon. It is an R&D project for the AFRL. But it sure would be fun installed on an Electrolite on floats. Like a duck off the pond! Hold my beer…..

CHIP