Building an EX2 in ITALY.

[PBY Catalina]

Gooooood morning everybody!

I’m Yves from Italy.

Born in Belgium, I moved to northern Italy some years ago.
I ordered an EX2 last June and I’m waiting for the crate to arrive here near Lago Maggiore.
I should be the first to build a Carbon Cub in Italy, but I guess not the last one as others Italian friends are tempted to start the adventure. The idea is to form a group of mountain flying and Cub enthusiasts here in the Italian Alps.

I have some experience in working on experimental, vintages and warbirds, but within associations, and this is going to be my first personal project.
I will post here the progress of my works.

Take care !

Yves

[PBY Catalina]

The workshop is ready.
The sawhorses are waiting the spares...

garage.jpg

[PBY Catalina]

I built this trolley to move the crate to my workshop.
Calculated for 3T.
(this should be enough…)

milles-pattes.jpg

[PBY Catalina]

The avionics corner:

avionics.jpg

[Giorgio]

Hello Yves , I'm an Italian living in Florida , and I'm waiting for my EX2 kit that suppose to arrive any day .The plan is to build it here register it with the FAA , and after the 40 hours flight time , i will disassemble it. and ship it to the North of Italy not too far from you, where i spend few months every year . I hope that we can fly them together one day. This my second kit here the first one picture .

[PBY Catalina]

Hello Yves , I'm an Italian living in Florida , and I'm waiting for my EX2 kit that suppose to arrive any day .The plan is to build it here register it with the FAA , and after the 40 hours flight time , i will disassemble it. and ship it to the North of Italy not too far from you, where i spend few months every year . I hope that we can fly them together one day. This my second kit here the first one picture .

Ciao Giorgio !

That's great ! Hope to see you soon here to share our passion !
And your building experience will be welcome also ...
One friend is tempted to sign for an EX3 also near Varese.
And there will be be maybe an other EX3 near Venezia.
So it could be that we will be 4 CC in northern Italy.

Let's keep in touch !

A presto !

[PBY Catalina]

Hello, Cub drivers and builders,

I hope that you had all a nice Christmas evening despite those particular circumstances.
Here in Italy we are in total lock-down, and only authorized to leave the house for “essential” shopping.

For me, Santa brings a huge package this year. He brings me my Carbon Cub kit! But he’s late, he left the port of Seattle yesterday, which is eight months after I made the order! And it should still take about two months to get here. So, it should be delivered minimum 10 months after the order. (Was it that long for yours?)

NYK_DELPHINUS @ SEATTLE.jpg
(NHK DELPHINIUS who is transporting my crate from Seattle)

So, I take this time to present myself.

I am a former pilot of SABENA Airlines. This Belgian airline went bankrupt in 2001 after 9/11. So I flew around the world and ended up moving to Italy. In addition to my career as an airline pilot, I was lucky enough to be a display-pilot in many air shows for some mythical airplanes like the Westland Lysander, the B-25 and the PBY Catalina. (I made the Type-rating in Seattle for this one!). Today, I’m still flying a venerable An-2.

The more humble Cub, however, has a very important place in my career. I did my PPL on a Piper Cub flying over the Belgian Ardennes, where the famous battle of the Bulge took place 75 years ago.

Today, I am the proud owner of a true little warbird, a Piper L-4 built in 1944, USAAF serial 44-80464. It is known that it was assigned to the Third US Army (the army of the famous General "Old Blood and Guts" George S. Patton Jr.), and that he arrived near Bastogne on December 16, 1944, on the exact date of the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. But we don’t know more about his military records.

the best.jpeg
(My L-4 as she is today)

Today, forced by the COVID to become, too soon, a young retired airline captain, I decided, as a retirement project, to build a CC EX2 in my garage here in Italy.

I have some experience in the restoration of warbirds, supervised by professional technicians, but this will be my first experience of building an aircraft kit by myself.

I don’t like Facebook, so I’m going to share my construction experience here with you.

[PBY Catalina]

The crate departed Yakima on 15th December, loaded on NYK Delphinus on 19th Dec, arrived this morning in Southampton:

Arrivée du Delphinus à Southampton le 5 fevrier 21 au matin.jpg

Still few days before arriving in Italy.

[aeroaddict]

Excellent! Keep us posted.

Cheers

[PBY Catalina]

The crate made an amazing tour: Yakima-Seattle-Vancouver-Seattle-San Francisco-Los Angeles-Panama-Southampton-Dublin-France-Switzerland-Italy-Milano… and finally here in my home.

A 85 day’s journey, in four trucks and three different container-ships. A lot of stops, many unexpected delays, a great moment when chatting with the commander of the harbor Southampton, being able to see live, via an HD webcam, the arrival of the huge container ship in Southampton port.

Nine months after I signed the Purchase Agreement, the crate of my EX2 kit finally arrived at his destination: my garage!Yes… nine months! A difficult delivery…
Thankfully, I was in touch with CC Europe, who was trying friendly to inform and reassuring me as much as they could. I very much appreciated the patience of Lukasz G. from CC EU who was very kind to always respond very precisely to my apprehensions during this long period.

It’s of course also because I’m on the other side of the Atlantic that it took so much time. But not only because of the distance, also because Cubcrafters took a lot of time to collect everything together in a single crate, to avoid several long deliveries.
At this stage I have emptied the crate and I started the inventory. And so fare so good!
The quality of the packaging and the labbeling of the boxes are absolutely exceptional. Bravo!

I decided to build this kit during, and also because of this pandemia, and today here in Italy, we are starting again a full lockdown. It’s a very difficult time we are having on both side of the ocean. I just read the editor’s log of Marc Cook in the March issue of Kitplanes magazine, “Demand and Supply”. Obviously, I’m not the only one having the same idea and having delivery problems. But I’m so fortunate! I’m standing here in front of this kit, like a kid in front of Santa Clause!

I can’t start this dream that was mine of building my own plane without having a thought for all those who don’t have that chance, all those who today are suffering from this pandemic, all those who have lost loved ones, and hope that health and economic catastrophe will end as soon as possible, hopefully… maybe for the Fourth of July?

Take care!
Y.