Wow. It’s hard to believe that it’s already March 8. An amazing amount has happened in the past six weeks. The Kickstarter launched, reached its minimum goal, and concluded. We launched a new web store (huge thanks to Shopify for making that relatively painless). We endured the agonizing two week wait for the money from Kickstarter. We ordered another $20,000+ in parts using personal credit cards. Last Thursday the Kickstarter funds finally arrived. (Yay!) Today we got confirmation that the last of the major components – the wifi adapters and Raspberry Pis – have shipped.
Last week the VK-172 USB GPS modules arrived – in full retail packaging. My wife and daughter helped me remove them from the packaging, then “shell” them – removing the plastic housing. I now have a box containing 500 GPSs, all tested to make sure that they boot. A random sampling of roughly 10% have been tested to make sure that they achieve a 3D GPS lock. So far – kudos to the nameless Chinese company who makes the VK-172 – they’ve all passed.
This past weekend was all about the fans. The 40mm x 10mm cooling fans arrived (as expected) without a connector. I spent several hours trimming, stripping, crimping and shrouding. (It really is far less sexy than it sounds.) At this point I have about 100 of the 1000 fans prepped for use in FlightBox. If there’s anything that intimidates me about this process it’s the thought of another 900 fans, waiting to be trimmed, stripped, crimped and shrouded. This is going to take a while. Fortunately, it’s the kind of work you can do in front of the TV in the evening.
The next few weeks look to include much of the same. But… I went ahead and booked an AirBNB and a rental car for Fun-N-Sun. It’s about 9 hours flight time from KC to Lakeland in the Tiger, and I’m looking forward to it. We’ve arranged to exhibit as a partner in the Avilution / Droid EFB booth. Sun-N-Fun is good pre for the madness of Oshkosh, so it will give me some idea of what to expect. If you’re going to be at the show, please stop by and say hello. I’ll be demoing FlightBox, talking Stratux, and (if we have any units in stock), selling kits. It should be a good time.
For everyone who’s ordered through the Kickstarter or on the web store prior to now – we expect to ship your FlightBox kit in March. Keep an eye on this blog and / or the Kickstarter updates page for the latest. Thanks to everyone for their enthusiasm and their patience. We’re doing our best to get you an outstanding product as quickly as we can.
Best Regards,
Steve