New vs. Used

Brad wrote:
Eric, SparrowHawk aside..............so, what if an American
Manufacturer came up with a sailplane that was designed and made in the
USA. I wonder if it would sell. Elsewhere in this thread it's been
stated that only the latest from Germany is what most want.

I think what needs to be done is a simple, elegant looking sports class
machine; designed from the ground up to be self-launch using an
electric motor. 15m, with an LD of aroud 40:1, this would not be the
latest hot competition ship, and would not even pretend to be, it would
be a fun flying, good performing sailplane that those of us who want to
fly for fun and don't have huge salaries could afford.

Maybe this isn't possible, but at least someone could try.

You mean like Apis or Silent electric self-launchers, but from the USA?
I think it would be an attractive offering and certainly technically
feasible, but a challenge as a business.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

"Transponders in Sailplanes" on the Soaring Safety Foundation website
www.soaringsafety.org/prevention/articles.html

"A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org

Yes, like the Apis-E or the Silent-2.
Any insights into the business aspects?

Thanks,
Brad


Eric Greenwell wrote:
Brad wrote:
Eric, SparrowHawk aside..............so, what if an American
Manufacturer came up with a sailplane that was designed and made in the
USA. I wonder if it would sell. Elsewhere in this thread it's been
stated that only the latest from Germany is what most want.

I think what needs to be done is a simple, elegant looking sports class
machine; designed from the ground up to be self-launch using an
electric motor. 15m, with an LD of aroud 40:1, this would not be the
latest hot competition ship, and would not even pretend to be, it would
be a fun flying, good performing sailplane that those of us who want to
fly for fun and don't have huge salaries could afford.

Maybe this isn't possible, but at least someone could try.

You mean like Apis or Silent electric self-launchers, but from the USA?
I think it would be an attractive offering and certainly technically
feasible, but a challenge as a business.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

"Transponders in Sailplanes" on the Soaring Safety Foundation website
www.soaringsafety.org/prevention/articles.html

"A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org

As an almost retired business owner (I have sometimes not visited the office
for over a year at a time :c), I think businesses here face several problems
when it comes to skilled labor.

The average worker no longer spends 20 to 30 years working for a firm. A few
years back, I read it was more like 4 to 5 years max. Spend the money to
train them and then they leave. Among much of the work force there is no
longer the same work ethic that once was common. And too, there's an us vs.
them mentality between management and labor which takes a lot of the "fun
and enjoyment" out of running a company. Worker expectations for wages and
benefits remain higher than in many other countries. Many are a bit spoiled,
unwilling to do the "grunt work", "What? A corner office and secretary
doesn't come with that shovel?!"

So, yeah, it might be tough to make a go of it here when the competition
(not referring to Germany now) can do it as good or better for less labor
cost.

bumper

While this may
"Brad" wrote in message
oups.com...
Yes, like the Apis-E or the Silent-2.
Any insights into the business aspects?

Thanks,
Brad


Eric Greenwell wrote:
Brad wrote:
Eric, SparrowHawk aside..............so, what if an American
Manufacturer came up with a sailplane that was designed and made in the
USA. I wonder if it would sell. Elsewhere in this thread it's been
stated that only the latest from Germany is what most want.

I think what needs to be done is a simple, elegant looking sports class
machine; designed from the ground up to be self-launch using an
electric motor. 15m, with an LD of aroud 40:1, this would not be the
latest hot competition ship, and would not even pretend to be, it would
be a fun flying, good performing sailplane that those of us who want to
fly for fun and don't have huge salaries could afford.

Maybe this isn't possible, but at least someone could try.

You mean like Apis or Silent electric self-launchers, but from the USA?
I think it would be an attractive offering and certainly technically
feasible, but a challenge as a business.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

"Transponders in Sailplanes" on the Soaring Safety Foundation website
www.soaringsafety.org/prevention/articles.html

"A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org

bumper wrote:
The average worker no longer spends 20 to 30 years working for a firm. A few
years back, I read it was more like 4 to 5 years max. Spend the money to
train them and then they leave. Among much of the work force there is no
longer the same work ethic that once was common. And too, there's an us vs.
them mentality between management and labor which takes a lot of the "fun
and enjoyment" out of running a company. Worker expectations for wages and
benefits remain higher than in many other countries. Many are a bit spoiled,
unwilling to do the "grunt work", "What? A corner office and secretary
doesn't come with that shovel?!"

This is way off topic, of course, but what the heck. I'm sure bumper
was one of the better bosses around, but he seems to have missed
something. During the 80s, corporations in the US started considering
their employees to be nothing more than replaceable "resources". They
could be laid off on a whim, their pension funds raided and rendered
insolvent, pay arbitrarily cut, benefits slashed, all in the name of
competitiveness and profits. By the early 90s, many of us working types
figured out what the deal was, and recognized there wasn't much point to
being loyal to companies that no longer felt any obligation to those of
us who had to do the work. Work ethic means little or nothing if you
are a faceless cog in a machine.

In other words, "as Ye sow, so shall ye reap"...

Marc

Brad wrote:
Yes, like the Apis-E or the Silent-2.
Any insights into the business aspects?

Just small ones from hanging around the Windward Performance folks a few
times a year.

You need a manufacturing facility large enough to hold all the tooling,
planes, and parts in progress, office, and material storage. If you do
all the work in-house, then you a paint booth, wing-sized autoclave, and
canopy oven and the space to put the things. Space costs money, and
heating or cooling the space may not be cheap.

Workers are most efficient if they can work full-time instead of a few
days on - a few days off, and if they can build several wings,
fuselages, etc at a time, instead one glider at a time. This means a
well-designed work flow, maybe some duplicated tooling, and a decent
order backlog.

Finding skilled workers isn't easy unless you are near a place that
already uses them (like Lancair for Windward Performance), and keeping
them isn't easy if you can't keep them busy and paid well. Similar to
the efficiency issue.

Glider pilots are a conservative sort, so getting them to buy a glider
from a new company can be a long, slow process. While you are waiting
for that order backlog to build up, you have to pay for the space, the
materials, the workers.

At some point, you have to figure out what to charge for the glider, and
that's a real headache because you aren't sure of the number of orders,
so you don't know what volume of materials and parts you'll be order, so
you don't know what the costs will be.

Volume is the big issue: anything you want to buy, whether it's fiber,
resin, laser cut parts, even plain old acetone, is cheaper if you buy a
lot of it, but that takes money up front and storage space.

The material prices can rise unexpectedly, whether it's carbon fiber,
resin, paint ($300+ a gallon for some types), or even that acetone.

And, you need some office help to do the accounting, ordering supplies
and making sure they show up on time (and finding alternate sources when
original ones can't deliver), the gofer to run around getting the
inevitable bits and pieces, replacing broken tools, and another gofer to
handle transportation if painting or other tasks are done elsewhere.
There's a lot of the "one damn thing after another" kind of problems.

Somebody has to talk to prospective customers, which can be very time
consuming, and make the sales (you hope that person is really busy). Oh
yeah, advertising, and showing up at the convention with your glider, a
6000 mile round trip at times.

If you have a lot of money to begin with, it's a lot easier to manage,
of course. Then you just have to worry about making a small fortune in
aviation by starting with a big one.

If I wanted to go into the business, I'd try talk to everyone that had
done it that I could find. Not just people like Greg Cole and George
Applebay that have actually started up glider companies, but people in
the small volume airplane field, and even the aircraft kit business. You
might already know a glider pilot that does that!

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

"Transponders in Sailplanes" on the Soaring Safety Foundation website
www.soaringsafety.org/prevention/articles.html

"A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org