This comes from EAA, IIRC. In the US, about 5% of the homebuilt aircraft
started up ever get finished. Of those that do, many pass through three
owner/builders during the course of the completion, and the process
usually takes about eight years. Of course, gliders are much simpler to
build.

Bill Piper was famous for saying, and I paraphrase, "It costs as much to
build a bad design as a good one. Tell me the weight of an airplane and I
can tell you how much it costs to build it."

This formula would probably be true for any [X]RP structure in any
particular location and with any particular construction method.


At 01:31 03 February 2009, Bob Kuykendall wrote:
On Feb 2, 3:27=A0pm, (Michel Talon) wrote:

I agree with all you said, but i don't think this model is
sustainable.

Michel, I do agree with you in that as well; in the greater scheme of
things the way sailplane manufacturers have operated cannot continue
indefinitely. However, I don't think that how they are operating is
damaging to the sport of soaring or to the worldwide community of
soaring pilots, so I do think it is my place to tell them how to run
their businesses. I can, of course, think of ways that they could do
more to benfit the sport and its enthusiasts, but only at the cost of
damage to their profitability. But again, it is their business, not
mine.

Getting back to your point, there is one thing that the 19th century
robber barons got right when they used social darwinism to justify
their avarice and greed: natural selection in the business environment
will force businesses to adapt or to evolve, and those that do neither
can be counted upon to wither and die. So I think that if their
current business model is not sustainable, then the manufacturers will
develop one that is, or will leave the business altogether.

Gliding is still living because there has been tens of thousands
of people learning to fly in Germany, Brittany, France, etc. for
*small
cost*, thanks to the dedication of instructors doing that for free,
over
all those years...

If only we could get those tens of thousands of people to spend a few
days each building gliders. If, for example, 10000 people spent three
workdays (24 hours) building gliders, that'd be enough labor to
produce 120 training gliders or about 180 single-seaters.

Of course, you can't do that with a glider factory, the logistics of
transporting and accommodating that many temporary workers at a single
facility would be a nightmare. But if you look closely at the world of
homebuilt aircraft that is very nearly what you see, with thousands of
distributed "manufacturing centers" in tiny workshops all across the
world. Of course, instead of thousands of people spending a few hours
each what we have is hundreds of people spending a thousand hours
each, but I think it can work the other way as well.

Thanks again, Bob K.