More Sportplanes Hype

rpellicciotti wrote:
Its just that there is a lot more that goes into an airplane than just
the stuff listed on the plan's material list. Things like fire
sleeving on the lines forward of the firewall, rod ends, tires, wheels,
brakes, instruments, switches, avionics, and so forth. It really adds
up. Heck, a decent paint job costs $3-5000.00 alone.


AMEN, Rick. I'm in the 'little pieces' phase of building. I bought
$1200 worth of steel tube 3.5yrs ago, and that has been most of what has
kept the building process going with minor outlays here and there. I
just got a small box (1/2 the size of a shoebox) from ACS yesterday. It
had some cable fittings, a few bolts, and such as that. You could hold
all of it in one hand (I did). $120...And I'm going to have quite a few
more of those type orders before everything is done.

The devil (and large price tag) is in the details.

--
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)."

Smitty Two wrote:

It isn't full of carpeting and showrooms. The pencil pushers get a
pencil and a desk from eBay and they work out on the shop floor where
they can see what the hell is going on and help when needed. Make 'em
buy their own paper. There's no advertising department. You won't need
one.

No the pencil pushers (at least the ones that know what they're doing)
will get their pencils from the supply closet of the other company. The
one that pays them. Because they sure as hell won't be working for
Smitty Airplane works, where pencil pushers work in the heat on an eBay
desk and buy their own paper 8*)

Gotta give it to you, though. That was a funny rant. Thanks.


--
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)."

In article ,
Ernest Christley wrote:



No the pencil pushers (at least the ones that know what they're doing)
will get their pencils from the supply closet of the other company. The
one that pays them. Because they sure as hell won't be working for
Smitty Airplane works, where pencil pushers work in the heat on an eBay
desk and buy their own paper 8*)

Gotta give it to you, though. That was a funny rant. Thanks.

Glad you like my humor. Here's an enco

No, the pompous arrogant airhead pencil pushers will work for the other
company. You know the ones. The pseudo-engineers who make drawings of
parts that can't be made, because they've never gotten their hands dirty
actually making things.

Like the drawing I got two days ago. A post that stands up from the
floor of a pocket. The edge of the post is 0.020 away from the wall of
the pocket. Sure. Just go to the tool store and tell them you need to
pick up a 0.020 diameter end mill with 1/4 inch flutes.

The ones who want to build airplanes, the really brilliant, dedicated,
hard-working ones who'd rather make a contribution than suck latte, will
work at Smitty. The kinds of people who built the Spirit of St. Louis.
The kinds of people who built Liberty Ships in three days. They aren't
extinct, are they?

Have you ever heard of Bridgeport? The best damn milling machines in the
world at any price? A machine shop without Bridgeport mills was a
laughingstock. Well, Bridgeport is gone. Bankrupt. Why? Because someone
with vision came along and said, there's no goddamn reason in the world
that a single-tool, 2-axis CNC with clumsy programming should cost forty
thousand dollars. And they started making machining centers - that is, a
machine that is about fifty times as automated and sophisticated as a
Bridgeport EZ-trak, and selling them for thirty thousand.

Paradigm shift. You might have to wait a while to see it, but when it
happens, it might as well have been instantaneous.

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. (insert emoticon of your choice
here)

No, 10000 airplanes per year won't happen. Why? Because airplanes are
not like cars, disposable after 3 or 4 years. They stay around forever
due to good maintenance and being built well to begin with. There is
just not enough turnover to reach that kind of volume.

Even in their heyday in the 70's, Cessna took about 250 man hours to
assemble a 172. I don't know what the man hours are in say a Ford
Focus but I would be suprised if it was more than a tenth of that.
Airplanes are labor intensive to make and don't lend themselves to mass
production. If they did, someone smarter than me would be doing it
already.

Rick

In article ,
Richard Riley wrote:

On Fri, 07 Oct 2005 01:11:18 -0700, Smitty Two
wrote:
:
:Like the drawing I got two days ago. A post that stands up from the
:floor of a pocket. The edge of the post is 0.020 away from the wall of
:the pocket. Sure. Just go to the tool store and tell them you need to
ick up a 0.020 diameter end mill with 1/4 inch flutes.

You don't have any .020 EDM scraps lying around?

I love this group almost as much as the EAA guys I drive 280 miles every
month to hang out with for an hour and a half. Sure, we could've sent it
out for that. But there isn't any reason that the post can't be blended
into the wall instead of being a separate feature, so I got out my #2
pencil and created rev A., because I know what mounts on the mounting
post and what it needs to be and what it doesn't need to be. And I
didn't sit down in a meeting for two hours with six people to talk about
it. The guy making the part asked me if he could blend it in, I looked
at it, said sure, and it's a done deal.

It's the kind of clumsy engineering that makes things expensive beyond
reasonable comprehension. Do you know how many custom screws we crank
out on the old Brown and Sharpe screw machines? Custom screws. There
must be, what, fifty million stock screws in the world? And these guys
sit around drawing the parts without any consideration of the fastener,
and then they invent a custom screw to put the widget together. It isn't
cleverness, it's ignorance.

Could not agree more Smitty, ...common sense is a mighty powerful thing!

Patrick
student SP
aircraft structural mech

"Smitty Two" wrote in message
news
In article ,
Ernest Christley wrote:



No the pencil pushers (at least the ones that know what they're doing)
will get their pencils from the supply closet of the other company. The
one that pays them. Because they sure as hell won't be working for
Smitty Airplane works, where pencil pushers work in the heat on an eBay
desk and buy their own paper 8*)

Gotta give it to you, though. That was a funny rant. Thanks.

Glad you like my humor. Here's an enco

No, the pompous arrogant airhead pencil pushers will work for the other
company. You know the ones. The pseudo-engineers who make drawings of
parts that can't be made, because they've never gotten their hands dirty
actually making things.

Like the drawing I got two days ago. A post that stands up from the
floor of a pocket. The edge of the post is 0.020 away from the wall of
the pocket. Sure. Just go to the tool store and tell them you need to
pick up a 0.020 diameter end mill with 1/4 inch flutes.

The ones who want to build airplanes, the really brilliant, dedicated,
hard-working ones who'd rather make a contribution than suck latte, will
work at Smitty. The kinds of people who built the Spirit of St. Louis.
The kinds of people who built Liberty Ships in three days. They aren't
extinct, are they?

Have you ever heard of Bridgeport? The best damn milling machines in the
world at any price? A machine shop without Bridgeport mills was a
laughingstock. Well, Bridgeport is gone. Bankrupt. Why? Because someone
with vision came along and said, there's no goddamn reason in the world
that a single-tool, 2-axis CNC with clumsy programming should cost forty
thousand dollars. And they started making machining centers - that is, a
machine that is about fifty times as automated and sophisticated as a
Bridgeport EZ-trak, and selling them for thirty thousand.

Paradigm shift. You might have to wait a while to see it, but when it
happens, it might as well have been instantaneous.

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. (insert emoticon of your choice
here)

Do you know how many custom screws we crank
out on the old Brown and Sharpe screw machines? Custom screws. There
must be, what, fifty million stock screws in the world? And these guys
sit around drawing the parts without any consideration of the fastener,

and then they invent a custom screw to put the widget together. It
isn't
cleverness, it's ignorance.

Then out in the field the new guy looses the screw in the dirt, and
because:

a bolt from the hardware store won't fit the threads

or we don't have the tamper proof Torx socket - with one tooth milled
off - to fit the special screw head

and the foreman says that widget has to be back in service before we
can get a new screw red labled in.........

We just weld it on and let the next guy worry about it :-)
====================
Leon McAtee
I really hate it when I'm "the next guy"

wrote:
Do you know how many custom screws we crank

out on the old Brown and Sharpe screw machines? Custom screws. There

Then out in the field the new guy looses the screw in the dirt, and
because:

a bolt from the hardware store won't fit the threads


Which is the reason the manager instructed the engineer to custom design
a screw in the first place?



--
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)."