Why is it so much more for say, the CT ,
when it's made of plastic...
Plastic (in this case, composites) is relatively expensive stuff. Most
of it is based on petrochems, so it's going to rise in cost with the
price of oil. And if there's any carbon to it, watch out! Right now the
Airbus A380 and Boeing 787 projects are competing for all the available
carbon, so supplies for bit players like kit aircraft makers are
getting quite pricey.
The molds are made...
Yeah, and if my experience is any guide, they cost somewhere between
$20000 and $100000 for the set. That money didn't come from thin air,
and you have to account for its amortization in each unit. Furthermore,
most aircraft composite molds degrade with use, and you'll only get 50
to 80 pulls before they need expensive attention. So if the molds cost
$20000 and you get 80 pulls from them, the per-pull cost will be
something like $250.
and with good help (someone vested in the company)
you can turn one out in a day.(kit that is).
Again, if my experience is any guide, that's a gross underestimate. We
found that the setup, prep, layup, bagging and debagging of a fuselage
half takes three people a full day. That's for a fuselage with about 85
square feet of wetted area. After the two shells are laid up, it takes
another full day to install the internals (stuff you can't get to once
the shells are joined) and join the shells. I figure that with
experience, more floor space, and some tooling optimization we can
crank out a 15m glider kit in about 18 person-days. So with three
people and working saturday we can maybe get one out in a week.
Who decides the price of these planes and why are they so High??
The market sets the price; LSAs, like anything, are priced at what the
market will bear.
Where is MR. Fords idea in these prices??
Which idea? Do you mean the one about paying a living wage so his
workers could afford his product?
Anyhow, the Ford production line (he didn't invent it; he didn't even
design the Model T production line himself) is predicated on the idea
of out-producing the competition with a product that every family, and
perhaps every adult, in the country might buy. We're talking about
hundreds of thousands, sometimes million of units a year.
In contrast, aircraft production deals with a product that might be of
interest to one person in five hundred; of that segment only a handful
might actually buy an aircraft. Commensurately, aircraft production
tends to be on the order of dozens or hundreds of units per year, the
very most successful might build thousands. Heck, even for the Cessna
150, the very best year was a few over 3000 units. At those production
rates, there is no way to achieve the economies of scale that they get
with cars.
Thanks, and best regards to all
Bob K.
http://www.hpaircraft.com/hp-24
http://www.hpaircraft.com/glidair