These are not YOUR airplanes - Was: High Cost of Sportplanes

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 03:47:38 -0400, Roger
wrote:

On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 23:37:30 -0400, "Gordon Arnaut"
wrote:

Evan,

I don't want to drag this out, I think some good points ahve been made --
however, I don't see why fiberglass airframe construction is going to be
less labor-intensive.

Once you have the moulds constructed, fiberglass lends itself well to
making large compound structures as one piece.

There is almost zero opportunity for automation in fiberglass construction,

That depends on your thinking. Fiberglass composite also lends
itself well to putting pieces together.

I dunno, Roger. I've been both to the Glastar factory and the Vans factory. At
Vans, a guy feeds a big piece of aluminum into a big CNC machine and
whango-whango-whango out comes a big pile of RV parts. But then I go see the
Glastar's fiberglass fuselage made, and its spray the release agent onto the
mold, then the gelcoat, then cut pieces of fiberglass and lay them into the
mold, then squeegee on some resin, then apply the foam, then apply another layer
of fiberglass and more resin, etc. etc., lather, rinse, repeat, then let the
assembly tie up your every expensive mold while the resin cures.

Looked to me that manufacturing aircraft parts in fiberglass is a *lot* more
effort...though I allow that less-skilled workers can probably be used.

Ron Wanttaja

P.S. Wanna hear something *really* scary? My spell checker passed
"whango-whango-whango" but hiccuped on "gelcoat."