Can it be that some parts are more or less worthless if you can't complete the kit? E.g. how many wing spars can they sell if they can not complete entire wing kit? I'd expect the $2.5M is for parts that can be sold as 'consumables' (skins, canopies, wheels, landing gear, etc...) and the remaining $18.5M that can only be sold in reasonable time as part of the kit to which they would need to produce additional parts to complete.

I imagine (we're all guessing here, right?) that anyone who bought that inventory would have the ability to build or source whatever parts were missing to complete (say) a wing kit. Let's say Van's inventory includes everything in the wing kit except the ribs. Manufacturing ribs wouldn't be a big challenge for someone with the financial wherewithal to buy the existing inventory.

I imagine (we're all guessing here, right?) that anyone who bought that inventory would have the ability to build or source whatever parts were missing to complete (say) a wing kit. Let's say Van's inventory includes everything in the wing kit except the ribs. Manufacturing ribs wouldn't be a big challenge for someone with the financial wherewithal to buy the existing inventory.

Right. So the question is whether they have $21M of good inventory on the shelves or they have $2.5M of junk inventory. If the inventory is junk, they should have written it down to whatever they estimate it is worth.

My belief is they have a ton of good inventory, but need to match that with another half-ton of different inventory to allow them to ship full kits. I.E. They have everything to ship 100 RV-7 fuselage kits except they need to manufacture 100 bulkhead sets because the bulkheads (hypothetically) were LCP. Being able to ship their existing inventory is what will allow them to turn that inventory into cash.

Right. So the question is whether they have $21M of good inventory on the shelves or they have $2.5M of junk inventory. If the inventory is junk, they should have written it down to whatever they estimate it is worth.

My belief is they have a ton of good inventory, but need to match that with another half-ton of different inventory to allow them to ship full kits. I.E. They have everything to ship 100 RV-7 fuselage kits except they need to manufacture 100 bulkhead sets because the bulkheads (hypothetically) were LCP. Being able to ship their existing inventory is what will allow them to turn that inventory into cash.

I thought the inventory they were writing off was defective.

My take is that $2.5M of the $21M inventory is usable and the rest is junk.

Since VAN's doesn't publish plans how would you know that you built them correctly?

Since VAN's doesn't publish plans how would you know that you built them correctly?

Does Van's no longer publish plans? I definitely have a set on paper circa 2000 for my RV-8, and also have an electronic copy on a CD

IIRC you could buy a paper plans set or the CD with or without a kit.

Does Van's no longer publish plans? I definitely have a set on paper circa 2000 for my RV-8, and also have an electronic copy on a CD

IIRC you could buy a paper plans set or the CD with or without a kit.

Of course it can be done. It's the question of 'would you' and if the parts in stock are sellable. Not everybody can do it, majority of current builders probably can't, making the incomplete kits useless to VANs

I don't know but are those plans actually manufacturing plans or assembly instructions?
Are you able to manufacture every part from scratch for the kit based on those plans?[/quote]
Here's a representative sample from the set in my desk drawer here--I've actually manufactured a couple of small parts (because I lost the originals) from the plans, but I certainly didn't try making an entire airplane from them.

I do have friends that I believe could do it without much problem, just that is is -far- quicker to buy a set of pre-punched parts. It is often quicker to remake a part if you ruin it than to wait on an order. Ask me how I know ;P

The graphic posted are detail component manufacturing plans. You could easily reverse engineer a physical component, but as this graphic shows, there's no real control on the dimensioning. so each part would need to be hand fit to ensure appropriate assembly.

I'm sure that Van's has their tooling and such set up to repeatably produce identical parts, even if their drawings don't reflect it.

Art

Up through the RV-6, the plans included everything you would need to scratch build the entire airplane. Post RV-6, what you get are assembly instructions which call out anything you need to do to the supplied (mostly pre-punched) parts.