I note from the Skylaunch price list that a new diesel engine equivalent in
power to a new GM marine 502 V8 costs £21,000 (31,000 Euros) more! The
cheapest Skylaunch 3 kit excluding engine and gearbox is £26,237 (38,072
Euros). As this includes all the difficult to make bits, it would be a
good starting point.

Derek Copeland


At 06:23 21 July 2009, johngalloway wrote:
On Jul 21, 2:59=A0am, tommytoyz wrote:
What we here in the USA need is a cheap good winch option. We need
price quotes. Bill says his will be cheaper than the Skylaunch. Well,
what the price then? Skylaunch publishes theirs. However, I agree with
Bill in that 90,000 Euros is way too expensive. They're certainly
making a nice profit at that price.

Perhaps a US bases shop could offer a similar system as the Skylaunch/
Tost for much less than European prices, especially if some clubs get
together and make a combined group order. I think one of the problems
is the very low volume of production for commercial manufacturers.

Or perhaps an easy set of plans could be drawn up and digitized to be
ordered and manufactured by a machine shop for any club or operator
whenever a new winch is desired? Bottom line, we have to get the price
down from 90,000 Euros.
Tom

Why talk euros? Skylaunch are a UK firm and the price is around
60,000 pounds sterling (possibly less with negotiation) - I think the
euro price of 90,000 quoted above represents a very out of date pound/
euro exchange rate of 1:1.5 and is therefore meaningless in the
context of this discussion. Other European winches such as the MEL
are way more expensive.

http://www.skylaunchuk.com/

(For the record my only connection with Skylaunch is hoping that our
club buys one soon)

John Galloway