I think that making the inventory of the kit parts is a good way of getting the feel of what is coming. It is there that you start to familiarize yourself with basically each part while manipulating them.
At first the task seems to be a bit overwhelming because there are so many parts scattered all over the place, you think that it’ll take forever to go through it. But at the end, it isn’t that bad. It took perhaps 2 hours and it was all done. And there’s no point counting the rivets. Van’s usually dumps few more than the quantity required to compensate for those that you will goof out. And you WILL. Trust me. It is nearly impossible to build an aircraft without having to remove few of them because one night or another you have screwed up somewhere. Anyways, better buy few spares from kits available at Aircraft Spruce or Wicks (Van’s online store have very competitive prices for supplies) and you’ll be fine.
The inventory revealed that everything was accounted for except for one item in bag 3013-1. This bag contains the Stall Warning kit that goes on the leading edge of the left wing. It looks like the Vane is missing. I’ll write to Van and report that the part is missing.
