Re: More manual on-line

["Brian K. Michalk" <michalk@awpi.com>]

Well, the first shipment of engines is due in today.  Man, it's taken
a lot longer than I anticipated.  It seems that every step of
the way someone has their finger in my pie.  
Finger 1:  transfer of money from personal accounts to our bank usually
	takes a day or two to verify.
Finger 2: Buy a letter of credit.  Sheesh the bureacracy at our
	bank (Nations Bank) is incredible.  It costs us money,
	then they let the thing sit on about 5 desks before it
	gets to Poland.  As far as I can tell, most of our problems
	are US inflicted.
Finger 3: Wire the LC to a Polish bank.
Finger 4: PZL takes a small handling fee for getting the engine
	to the airport.
Finger 5: Pay for freight to Houston.
Finger 6: Pay the freight forwarder for organising everything:
Finger6a: FF pays US customs
Finger6b: FF pays customs bond
Finger6c: FF pays warehousing
Finger6d: FF pays for someone to act as our agent to claim goods
Finger 7: Pay for marine cargo insurance.
Finger 8: Pay someone, or ourselves to go to Houston to pick up
	the engines.

Now that we have the bugs worked out on the wording of our
Letters of Credit, we should be able to boilerplate that process.
This first time required several faxes to Poland so that we both
agreed to the terms of the LC.  We also agreed to the terms of
a formal purchasing agreement.

My biggest gripe is obviously our bank for stalling the process
on the LC.  We have found a different freight forwarder in
Houston who does LC, FF, insurance, and the whole nine yards.
I'm thinking that they will have the entire process in one office
and will have it very streamlined.  We are waiting for them to
send us their information.

The best part about the whole thing is that the Letter of Credit
was received by PZL on Monday, and the engines should be here
three days later on Wednesday.  At least that part is working
as planned.

Now that I've typed this all out, I suppose others may want to
know this as well.  I'll forward this to the mailing lists as well.
If you think this is fit for VV, then you may edit and include
it there as well.

-- 
Brian Michalk  <http://www.awpi.com/michalk>
Life is what you make of it ... never wish you had done something.
Aviator, experimental aircraft builder, motorcyclist, SCUBA diver
musician, home-brewer, entrepenuer and SINGLE!