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

Ron,

That's a good comparison. A Glasair or Lancair kit costs about double what a
Van's kit costs and it still takes about the same build time to complete. In
fact even the Van's quick-build costs less than a Glasair slow-build and you
get probably less than half the build time.

And what if the Van's kit were designed to be built with pulled rivets? This
would cut build time dramatically and that slow-build kit could be built in
about the same time it takes to build one of the composite fast-build kits
that cost three times as much.

Look at the Zenith 601, and compare its price to some of the sportplane
composite kits. The composte kits are usually twice as much money.

The conclusion has to be that composites are more expensive because it costs
more to make them. No question about it, composite construction involves
lots of hands-on labor.

Also composite materials are expensive compared to aluminum. So if there is
no advantage in labor costs and material costs are higher, how does
composite make sense for a cheap airplane? It doesn't.

Regards,

Gordon.



"Ron Wanttaja" wrote in message
...
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."