Made in the USA

OKOK guys..I meant to build a plane at home.. The only one I really respect
in the kit market is the sonex,,The owner gladly shows one that you can
purchase all the material for the plane at ,,say , wicks aircraft for about
3k.. and that includes the brakes and all except engine. The kit cost much
more, but not ridiculously more. Why is it so much more for say, the CT ,
when it's made of plastic.The molds are made and with good help (someone
vested in the company) you can turn one out in a day.(kit that is). Who
decides the price of these planes and why are they so High?? Where is MR.
Fords idea in these prices?? any way ,,I'm crying in my beer because I can't
afford one. I'm the trashman,,worked for the trash company a long time.
"Montblack" wrote in message
...
("Denny" wrote)
(snippy snippy)
So you want to manufacture the WHiz Bang 4, that you drew up in your
spare time at your real job...
OK, ya gotta have a shop to work in... So go lease a factory building...
BANG, ya got overhead! And you have to feed it every month, even while
you are still trying to put the business together...


"Hello, China?"


Montbwack

Why is it so much more for say, the CT ,
when it's made of plastic...

Plastic (in this case, composites) is relatively expensive stuff. Most
of it is based on petrochems, so it's going to rise in cost with the
price of oil. And if there's any carbon to it, watch out! Right now the
Airbus A380 and Boeing 787 projects are competing for all the available
carbon, so supplies for bit players like kit aircraft makers are
getting quite pricey.

The molds are made...

Yeah, and if my experience is any guide, they cost somewhere between
$20000 and $100000 for the set. That money didn't come from thin air,
and you have to account for its amortization in each unit. Furthermore,
most aircraft composite molds degrade with use, and you'll only get 50
to 80 pulls before they need expensive attention. So if the molds cost
$20000 and you get 80 pulls from them, the per-pull cost will be
something like $250.

and with good help (someone vested in the company)
you can turn one out in a day.(kit that is).

Again, if my experience is any guide, that's a gross underestimate. We
found that the setup, prep, layup, bagging and debagging of a fuselage
half takes three people a full day. That's for a fuselage with about 85
square feet of wetted area. After the two shells are laid up, it takes
another full day to install the internals (stuff you can't get to once
the shells are joined) and join the shells. I figure that with
experience, more floor space, and some tooling optimization we can
crank out a 15m glider kit in about 18 person-days. So with three
people and working saturday we can maybe get one out in a week.

Who decides the price of these planes and why are they so High??

The market sets the price; LSAs, like anything, are priced at what the
market will bear.

Where is MR. Fords idea in these prices??

Which idea? Do you mean the one about paying a living wage so his
workers could afford his product?

Anyhow, the Ford production line (he didn't invent it; he didn't even
design the Model T production line himself) is predicated on the idea
of out-producing the competition with a product that every family, and
perhaps every adult, in the country might buy. We're talking about
hundreds of thousands, sometimes million of units a year.

In contrast, aircraft production deals with a product that might be of
interest to one person in five hundred; of that segment only a handful
might actually buy an aircraft. Commensurately, aircraft production
tends to be on the order of dozens or hundreds of units per year, the
very most successful might build thousands. Heck, even for the Cessna
150, the very best year was a few over 3000 units. At those production
rates, there is no way to achieve the economies of scale that they get
with cars.

Thanks, and best regards to all

Bob K.
http://www.hpaircraft.com/hp-24
http://www.hpaircraft.com/glidair

In a previous article, "Bob Kuykendall" said:
Plastic (in this case, composites) is relatively expensive stuff. Most
of it is based on petrochems, so it's going to rise in cost with the
price of oil. And if there's any carbon to it, watch out! Right now the
Airbus A380 and Boeing 787 projects are competing for all the available
carbon, so supplies for bit players like kit aircraft makers are
getting quite pricey.

Some people I know who build canoes say that it's hard to get kevlar these
days because the military is buying it all up. Kevlar makes good light
structures for canoes, you'd think it would make good LSAs as well.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
I use shell scripts at ork. Some cow-orkers refuse to touch them, their
excuse is usually "I don't understand perl". Their fear of perl is such
that all things unknown are also perl. -- Andrew Dalgleish

Earlier, Paul Tomblin wrote:

Some people I know who build canoes say that it's hard to get kevlar these
days because the military is buying it all up. Kevlar makes good light
structures for canoes, you'd think it would make good LSAs as well.

Well, it depends. Aramids like Kevlar are strong stuff, but at issue is
the fact that it isn't very stiff. So it adds a lot of toughness to
composites, but isn't all that useful for adding strength or stiffness
to primary structures. Glider manufactuers will tell you that they add
aramid to the cockpit in order to improve crashworthiness, glider
pundits will often joke that the aramid is just there so they'll find
all the parts in the same hole. I add Kevlar to some of my cockpit
parts to make them tougher and less likely to produce pilot-impaling
splinters.

BTW, the same "Military is hogging it all" stories are circulating
regarding ultra high molecular weight polyethelene (UHMWPE) products
like Spectra and Dyneema.

Bob K.

I forgot to address this earlier:

Earlier, wesleymarceaux wrote:

The only one I really respect
in the kit market is the sonex,,The owner gladly shows one that you can
purchase all the material for the plane at ,,say , wicks aircraft for about
3k.. and that includes the brakes and all except engine. The kit cost much
more, but not ridiculously more...

I've found that even for very simple homebuilts, there can be a huge
huge difference in buildability between kit parts and raw materials.

For one thing, with a complete kit, it's all there. You don't have to
hunt for it, you don't have to figure out how to get it shipped, you
don't have to haggle or shop around, it's all there. It is often an
eye-opening experience when you total up all the time it takes to find
the right stuff, and the money it takes to cover packaging and
shipping.

For another thing, there's often a lot of pretty subtle time-savers
that go into a kit. Take, as an example, the old Schreder kit
sailplanes. All of the welding would be done. All the flat parts have
their outlines scribed onto stock; just bandsaw on the scribe and drill
on the punch. All the bent parts are already braked. All the formed
ribs and bulkheads are flanged and ready to go. Unlike the RVs, the
rivet holes aren't pre-punched, but there are only two rivet pitches to
the whole thing, and you get rivet spacing guides for both pitches.

That may not sound like a lot, but it adds up to a lot of time saved
and trouble avoided. Building from scratch can certainly be more
satisfying, especially for scroungers and salvage hounds like me, but
it often takes twice as long as if you'd bought the kit.

Thanks again, and best regards

Bob K.
http://www.hpaircraft.com/hp-24
http://www.hpaircraft.com/glidair

"wesleymarceaux" wrote in
news:ca4Ag.1604$W01.1341@dukeread08:

OKOK guys..I meant to build a plane at home.. The only one I really
respect in the kit market is the sonex,,The owner gladly shows one
that you can purchase all the material for the plane at ,,say , wicks
aircraft for about 3k.. and that includes the brakes and all except
engine. The kit cost much more, but not ridiculously more. Why is it
so much more for say, the CT , when it's made of plastic.The molds are
made and with good help (someone vested in the company) you can turn
one out in a day.(kit that is). Who decides the price of these planes
and why are they so High?? Where is MR. Fords idea in these prices??
any way ,,I'm crying in my beer because I can't afford one. I'm the
trashman,,worked for the trash company a long time. "Montblack"
wrote in message
...

I'm building a Sonex from scratch (including welded parts)& I can tell
you the Materials less engine will cost more than $3000. I've done a
lot of scrounging and I'm looking at almost double that.

The Sonex is a great plane & without a doubt the most bang for the buck
scratch or kit, but I didnt want anyone to think they could build the
FWB for 3 grand...

--
-- ET :-)

"A common mistake people make when trying to design something
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete
fools."---- Douglas Adams