High Cost of Sportplanes

Evan Carew wrote:
We are talking about a commercially built & sold unit here.

AINut wrote:

Replace that $15,000 for the engine with less than $5,000 for engine
and prop if you use auto engines and build the PSRU yourself.

rec.aviation.HOMEBUILT

--
This is by far the hardest lesson about freedom. It goes against
instinct, and morality, to just sit back and watch people make
mistakes. We want to help them, which means control them and their
decisions, but in doing so we actually hurt them (and ourselves)."

On Fri, 23 Sep 2005 14:18:27 GMT, Ernest Christley wrote:

Evan Carew wrote:
AINut wrote:
Replace that $15,000 for the engine with less than $5,000 for engine
and prop if you use auto engines and build the PSRU yourself.

We are talking about a commercially built & sold unit here.

rec.aviation.HOMEBUILT

No, you misunderstood Evan's comment. He was participating in a discussion
about the manufacturing costs of *production* LSA aircraft. The manufacturer of
an SLSA cannot use the approach AINut suggested, unless they do the work to
ensure the engine conforms to the consensus standard.

Once a buyer PURCHASES that production LSA, they can remove the engine, replace
it with an auto-engine/PSRU combination, and get the airplane re-certified as an
Experimental Light Sport. But production or experimental, at the time an LSA
receives its airworthiness certificate, it *must* have a conforming engine
installed. So the ELSA owner ends up with two engines.

I expect some workarounds might be possible...the manufacturer could arrange to
buy back the delivered engine and repeat the process. It could be like that old
movie "Skin Game," where the manufacturer delivers an SLSA with a conforming
engine, buys the engine back, and installs it in another newly-produced SLSA to
be sold to another person intending an ELSA conversion.

Ron Wanttaja

On 2005-09-17 13:48:57 -0400, Evan Carew said:

Interesting economic proposal there. I wonder if its time for the
experimental community to consider something along the lines of a few,
open, i.e. GPLd designs, which manufacturers can build standardized
parts and tooling for.

Already been done.

The Gyrobee gyroplane, developed as a documentation package by Dr Ralph
McTaggart. Parts available from several vendors, notably StarBee Gyros
of Worcester, Massachusetts.

http://taggart.glg.msu.edu/gyro/gbee.htm

There is another UL gyro project, Tim Blackwell's Jyro Deer, that Tim
has promised to open-source when he has it sorted. I'm not aware of any
f/w but it's a really, really good idea, Evan, isn't it?

Fundamental problems with LSA pricing are perception problems, IMHO:

1. existing kit buyers (& wannabees) are mostly cheap charlies, and or
walter mittys.

2. ergo, they will never buy at any price under which a product can be
made. As Bob Kuykendall pointed out, these things are built by hand
(volumes too small for automation, until you're Cirrus size).

3. Economies from US + Euro standardization won't happen. The US market
is already resisting the european JAR VLA designs available under SLSA
because they are cramped for large, fat Americans. (as one vendor told
me, "these planes are built for bony French asses," eh.) . US allows
600 KG, Euros 450 -- that's a difference which will allow (require)
differentiation. Indeed the first designs to US (not Euro) specs are
happening already.

4. You can build a plane for relatively low money now (Fly Baby, Zenith
from plans) and most choose not to. A lot of people still seem to be
looking for the four-seat 200-knot STOL plane they can build for $30k
in 200 hours and power with an old Corvair engine. It never existed and
it's never going to.

5. If LSA succeeds it will be because people who are not in aviation
now come in. Compare what you can do in a high end SLSA and what you
can do in a sailboat. Compare prices new. These planes are not
competing with a stack of wood and a set of Pietenpol plans, they are
competing with boats, snowmobiles and ATVs, and other outdoor
recreations.

6. Some of the statements by the original poster, about Cirrus
specifically, are not true. The unrecoverability from spin is one of
them (Cirrus SR-20 was spun at least once in testing and recovered with
normal inputs, opposite rudder, neutral ailerons and forward stick).
It's true a full spin series was not done, and it's also true a full
spin series is not required by FAR 23. Most of us fly planes that are
placarded against spins -- I daresay all of us have flown a 172, which
is placarded against spins in some conditions (i.e. flaps down -- the
rudder is masked in that case and recovery is compromised). The P-51
Mustang is placarded against spins with the fuselage tank full (many
privately held Mustangs have this tank removed). Remedial action in the
PIF (1940s version of a dash one) is to bail out!

In re Cirrus, salesmen for a competing product were spreading the
"Cirrus has a chute because it is unsafe" canard in 2001-03 and have
been directed to stop by the manufacturer of their product, cause it
ain't true. The chute was part of the very first designs for what
ultimately became the SR-20. It was from the outset a key component of
the Klapmeiers' safety vision for their aircraft.

The VK-30 kit and VK-50 may have had nonstandard spin characteristics
-- I don't know -- but they were withdrawn from the market, and
represent an earlier, and much less mature, vision than the SR series.

7. The entrepreneurs that build kit aircraft or make plans available
are taking immense risks for measly returns. The average kit impresario
would have done better putting his money in Enron stock. I know one guy
who finished his prototype after years of labor, built his production
tooling, then lost the prototype in a ground fire -- meanwhile, people
who looked at his very capable kit aircraft kept telling him he was
charging too much for kits -- the price they wanted to pay was less
than his cost of materials.

I know another fellow who got more magazine covers than you could shake
a stick at with his beautiful, powerful, roomy kit. You can't eat
magazine covers. Or Gold Lindys for that matter. He sold a number of
kits that you can count on your fingers, and decided to build UAVs for
a customer that appreciated his efforts, was straight with him, and
paid well -- the government, of all things -- rather than customers who
disparaged his efforts, lied, and stiffed him. He would love to offer
kits again some day but he has a family that deserves better of him.

The most successful kit companies like Van's and RANS to name two, are
barely getting by, by the standards of modern industry. Exxon made 9.9
percent last quarter. Bank of America, almost 30%. What did Van's make?
Payroll, I would guess. The only people that ever made 30% in this
industry did it by selling stuff they didn't have to sell (we could all
name the names).

8. For those that offer these products in this fickle market, the only
possible explanation is that they have emotional reasons for doing so.
For that, I am grateful. Think about what Richard van Grunsven has done
for our sport, and think about what he could have done for himself if
he had applied that level of effort to working for Bank of America
stacking up someone's gold teeth in a vault, or for Exxon or somebody.

cheers

-=K=-

Rule #1: Don't hit anything big.

On 2005-09-17 14:34:17 -0400, "Gordon Arnaut" said:

The fact that the company that bought the PZL plant immediately stopped
production tells you a lot about the business model of the aerospace
industry. It is based on low production volume and high profit margin.
A lot of the business comes from government contracts and that's the
way the industry likes it, as the government is the best customer you
can have -- never any complaints about price.

Interesting point. Vern Raburn wound up working with a lot of
non-aviation-contractors because he finds cost-plus contracting not
only inefficient but, quote unquote, "evil."

We can see this to some extent in the Rolls Royce acquisition of Walter
engines in the Czech Republic. You can be sure we won't be sseing any
of the good Walter turbines or LOM piston engines at cheap prices ever
again. That is history.

Walter was at NBAA, promoting what they call "the other turboprop."
Still significantly less to get into a 601P than a PT-6 or R-R 250. I
got to practice my Czech on them.

Still, the engine is a major cost of the airplane and it's too bad that
the excellent Eastern European manufacturers have been swallowed up and
taken out of comission.

What you had for a brief period was stuff being sold under cost due to
the economic dislocations created by the end of the closed Warsaw Pact
market. Following your logic to its ultimate conclusion, we should hope
that the Chinese start making aero engines and don't ever give up
Communism....

this is in fact where mass production and technologies like CNC come
into play.

If you are smaller than Van's -- and every maker is -- then you can't
exploit such economies of scale. The tooling cost needs to amortized
over a production run of some kind.


And speaking of Van's, they are probably the best value going in the
kit market. You can buy the entire airframe ready to assemble for
$15,000 -- and this leaves the company a good profit margin.

Not sure about the size of Van's profit margin -- enough to survive, I
think. One reason Van's costs are low is that he uses overseas labour
to assemble the QB kits. Again, you need to be of a certain size for it
to be worth your while to do that, and as economic conditions improve
in the nations where Van's assembly work is done, he will face the
choice of raising prices or relocating production again to another
distressed nation.

If you hired someone at $20 an hour to build that airplane, that's only
$30,000 if you figure 1500 hours build time. (This is legal in Canada
and is spawning something of a mini-industry as people look for
alternatives to the high cost of airplane ownership).

It is not legal in the US for amateur-built aircraft (see dictionary,
"amateur.") The US regulations say that you can build for education or
recreation. I dunno about you, but I paid my mechanics significantly
more then $20 when I had a repair station. Also, for a real employee,
wage is only about half the cost.

this is less than the cost of new LSAs, but you are getting a heck of
a lot more airplane by any measure.

Depends on the LSA. Float Planes and Amphibians was selling a Drifter
on amphib floats with radio and mode-C for $45k. Less profit in that
than in an SUV at the same price, for both manufacturer and dealer. The
only way people get a reasonable Van's airplane flying at under about
$60k is by valuing their labour at $0.

The idea that the pricing of LSAs realistically reflects cost
conditions is pure nonsense. But leave it to the magazines to try to
pull the wool over our eyes.

If there was this great delta between costs and prices, some hero would
go sailing in there and build his market share. The fact that no one
has done so, in a fundamentally free market, indicates that prices are
either reasonable, or being set by a cartel. Given the dozens of
producers, a cartel is unlikely to say the least.

cheers

-=K=-

Rule #1: Don't hit anything big.

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Kevin O'Brien,

Interesting posts. I wonder if you would agree with me that the
kit/small GA builders have wrung most of the fat out of the building
process and that any further gains are in incremental productivity /
materials handling procedures? If so, I wonder what you think could be
realized in savings over the current processes?

Evan
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On 2005-09-17 13:44:06 -0400, "Gordon Arnaut" said:

However, Cessna has all of these costs -- and more --and is still able
to price a brand new Skyhawk at $155,000. This is a tremendous value
when compared to one of these new LSAs that cost close to $100,000.

I think you would be very hard pressed to find a new Skyhawk for that
price. Most of them sell with NAVII or NAVIII and some are now selling
with Garmin glass. $$$$$$

Most of the cost of a new Cessna, or Cirrus, for that matter, is
bought-in assemblies and material. Cessna manages to duck some of it
because it buys engines from a corporate partner, but not much.


Let's look at the CT2K for example. This composite plane carries a list
price of $85,000 and with even a few panel options that most of us
would consider essential, you are close to $100,000. this plane has an
empty weight of under 600 pounds and a gross weight of just over
1200lbs., which is less than half of the Skyhawk.

The CT's dimensions and weights are constrained by the European
ultralight category. If the designers could work to the larger US
sportplane

Yet somehow Cessna manages to give you all this for a cost of only
about 50 percent more than the CT2K. Either Cessna is some kind of
manufacturing genius or the LSA is way overpriced. You are literally
getting more than twice the airplane for only half again as much cost.

The manufacturing cost for the Cessna is probably actually lower, and
most of the design engineering has been amortized. The 172 is a much
more profitable product for both manufacturer and dealer than the CT.

cheers

-=K=-

Rule #1: Don't hit anything big.

On 2005-11-14 12:45:14 -0500, Evan Carew said:

Interesting posts. I wonder if you would agree with me that the
kit/small GA builders have wrung most of the fat out of the building
process

I'm not sure that's the case, because we're in the midst of several
real industrial revolutions -- materials, automation, organizational.
These add up to the possibility that we will see, someday soon,
airplanes assembled on a line-production rather than a bespoke basis.

If you've ever tried to fit a factory airframe part (that cost an arm
and a leg) to a Beech, you know what I mean.

and that any further gains are in incremental productivity / materials
handling procedures? If so, I wonder what you think could be realized
in savings over the current processes?

I know that everyone who's seen the Eclipse plant (including Dale
Klapmeier) has been agog.

The problem in the kit field is manifold:

1. Barriers to entry are almost nil. You can rivet up some tubes or cut
some foam, blow a couple grand on a booth at Oshkosh and you are a kit
manufactuer. And God help your customers. In fact, you can skip the
tubes or foam and just show up at OSH with a computer rendering or a
shiny model.

Even if you have a degree from a top AeroE program, certified aircraft
makers are not going to be interested in your design ideas. If you
start off in the kit market, no matter how flaky your idea, somebody
will try to buy it from you, if you can support yourself long enough.

2. For many, the kit airplane dream is built on a myth of vastly
lowered cost. Only if you ignore used aircraft, and value your labour
at a factor of zero.

3. Some companies try to drive the labor cost down towards zero by
doing work offshore. Van's does this, and Bearhawk frames are welded-up
in Mexico (which combines Third World wages with easy transportation to
US and Canadian first-world destinations). Do that, and you wind up
hoping that Mexico stays corrupt so that desperate Mexicans will work
for pennies on the dollar... there is no material reason prosperity
should stop hard at the Rio Grande, but it does; it's Mexican
government and elite policies that cause that. That's an unstable
situation that may last 50 or 100 years but won't last forever.

But the irreducible problem with lowering labor costs on the kit side
is that by law, you only get half of the benefit, because the ultimate
registrant must (under the law, must) do 51% of the work.

4. Many people in the kit field want to build, but my impression is
that more want to fly. Hence the popularity of "builder-assist"
programs, which are now getting a hairy eyeball from the FAA after
about a decade of abuses. One vendor rubbed the FAA's nose in his
disdain for the law, which is never really smart, and now a bunch of
people who were minding their own business and making for safe aircraft
and happy customers are at risk.

5. Many of the designers out there have a design bug or three that they
have to get out of the system, so they don't mind working for nothing
but job satisfaction. You can even build a small team of like-minded
volunteers. But you reach the point where this structure does not
scale... you run out of True Believers sooner rather than later.

To return to your question -- I do not think productivity in this
industry is anywhere near where it could be, but the economics haven't
been compelling enough to make anyone chase higher productivity, with
the couple of exceptions noted.

Sometimes people have mistaken getting wrapped around the axle of CAD,
for increasing productivity. Two projects that were going to
revolutionize the sport via CAD were the Prescott Pusher, and the
DreamWings Valkyrie. Worth a search through the back threads of this
group. I presume the CAD files of those two ghastly projects are still
sitting in somebody's closet... for the sake of pilots yet unborn I
pray that the guy's mother throws them out next time she cleans.

cheers

-=K=-

Rule #1: Don't hit anything big.

Kevin O'Brien wrote:
4. Many people in the kit field want to build, but my impression is that
more want to fly. Hence the popularity of "builder-assist" programs,

All good points.

One thing I'd like to add is that to a novice, kit-built is a less
intimidating first project than plans-built.

Of course, "knowing what I know now..." For example, the different
kinds of builder support available for plans-built (EAA chapters, online
groups), there is no such thing as a plans-built company getting behind
on parts delivery or going bankrupt, and finally plans-built
construction time isn't necessarily greatly increased from kit-built
(several sub-kits for popular designs are available from the major
homebuilder companies like Aircraft Spruce and Wicks).

And of course, again, these things are actually well documented on, oh,
say, this newsgroup, Ron W's book...

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Kevin O'Brien wrote:
On 2005-11-14 12:45:14 -0500, Evan Carew said:

Interesting posts. I wonder if you would agree with me that the
kit/small GA builders have wrung most of the fat out of the building
process


I'm not sure that's the case, because we're in the midst of several real
industrial revolutions -- materials, automation, organizational. These
add up to the possibility that we will see, someday soon, airplanes
assembled on a line-production rather than a bespoke basis.
Possibly, that is if you can afford the initial cost of 3D CAD &
fixturing at your local manufacturing house. I currently make water
treatment eq & typically spend ~ $8K / smallish device with moderate
complexity to have the CAD work done. This would translate to a typical
wing or fuse model in fiberglass with the moving parts ( metal models of
the same structures would no doubt cost more). These same parts I have
made up on CAD then cost me ~ $1.2K / unit with ~ $300 in materials
costs to be made on CNC machines. I typically have 10 made at a time.

The manufacturing house I use (one that typically makes transmissions
for GM) tells me that if I go to 100 or more parts at a time, the price
per part will come down to ~ $400.

If you've ever tried to fit a factory airframe part (that cost an arm
and a leg) to a Beech, you know what I mean.

and that any further gains are in incremental productivity / materials
handling procedures? If so, I wonder what you think could be realized
in savings over the current processes?


I know that everyone who's seen the Eclipse plant (including Dale
Klapmeier) has been agog.
Yeah, I've heard. Unfortunately, that tech isn't exactly what the
average kit / small GA aircraft manufacturer can afford to include into
their process. My understanding is that all of their FSW ops are under
CNC control with special fixturing.

[snip]
To return to your question -- I do not think productivity in this
industry is anywhere near where it could be, but the economics haven't
been compelling enough to make anyone chase higher productivity, with
the couple of exceptions noted.

Sometimes people have mistaken getting wrapped around the axle of CAD,
for increasing productivity. Two projects that were going to
revolutionize the sport via CAD were the Prescott Pusher, and the
DreamWings Valkyrie. Worth a search through the back threads of this
group. I presume the CAD files of those two ghastly projects are still
sitting in somebody's closet... for the sake of pilots yet unborn I pray
that the guy's mother throws them out next time she cleans.

Yeah well, organization doesn't always translate into producability. On
that note, I seem to get a lot of feedback from this group about along
exactly those lines. Either the respondents to this thread get hung up
on the idea of design & cost, or are stuck on the idea of producing a
final product. I can't seem to get anyone to twig to the idea that doing
research into processes capable of reducing the labor involved in small
parts count (lightly funded) ops has real merit for this interest group.
Specifically, summarizing final findings down to a collection of process
documents, associated costs, and estimates on final product impact.

IF you take a look at the Eclipse site's tech section, its all about
process. Every assembly is made so it fits in its assigned place
precisely (CAD == known tolerances) and every assembly has an exactly
known final assembly cost (manufacturing studies), and the sheet metal
is but welded with an exotic process adapted to thin metal aluminum
(process innovation). I have to do that for my business in the water
quality eq biz, why don't we do it in this biz? If there was someone who
was, they'd eat everybody else's lunch... oh wait, isn't that Eclipse?
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"Kevin O'Brien" kevin@org-header-is-my-domain-name wrote in message
news:2005111716222375249%kevin@orgheaderismydomain name...

But the irreducible problem with lowering labor costs on the kit side is
that by law, you only get half of the benefit, because the ultimate
registrant must (under the law, must) do 51% of the work.

Kevin............

Not true. Please rephrase.

Rich S.