If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#21
|
|||
|
|||
Evan Carew wrote: Smitty, Ideally, I would like to treat this as a community project where the community contributes the expertise & labor and benefits from the data. It comes down to "the tragedy of the commons". You are asking people to privatize the costs and commonize the profits, the reverse from human nature and good business. The biggest problem in sport aviation is the low volume involved. If you get the volume up the costs will come down a great deal. Overseas production could offset this somewhat. However, getting people to build aircraft in most countries, even on an experimental kit basis, is tough. The list of countries that have job shops you can send a print to, notated in the English language and dimensioned in US units, and have a hope in hell of getting a part back more than very vaguely resembling the print, at total costs significantly cheaper than in the US, is quite small. |
#22
|
|||
|
|||
Richard Riley wrote:snip When the cow's giving birth at 3 AM some freezing winter morning someone has to go help. If it's the "community" cow and not mine, I might just stay in bed. How did cows produce calves before there were humans? Anyway, there are a lot of aircraft designs that for all intents and purposes are in the public domain. Their designers have passed on without a clear trail of inheritance. The FAA has allowed aircraft built in conformance to these Type Certificates to be issued Standard Category C of A's. The cost of R&D of basic light aircraft, in any event is not a deal breaker if you can get some amortization, as a previous poster said. One necessary step is for the use of a powerplant, also as another poster said, NOT specific to light aircraft. There simply is not the volume necessary. An engine built around an existing auto, motorcycle or similar powerplant WITHOUT the direct involvement of the original engine manufacturer is pretty much a necessity. If the core engine manufactuirer has to get involved they will jack the price to Lycoming levels or worse (PFM). |
#23
|
|||
|
|||
Section 8,
Interesting use of words there. In my experience, "the tragedy of the commons" is common jargon for lawyers. I however, work in the computer science field and am familiar with the Linux OS phenomenon. In that case, an entire OS & suite of applications was created out of love. Granted, the cost of such a creation is much lower than for aircraft structural design, however, I'm guessing that most of us in this news group have enough tools and materials to put together such reference structures as we are talking about here. Evan Carew Accessory Section 8 wrote: Evan Carew wrote: Smitty, Ideally, I would like to treat this as a community project where the community contributes the expertise & labor and benefits from the data. It comes down to "the tragedy of the commons". You are asking people to privatize the costs and commonize the profits, the reverse from human nature and good business. |
#24
|
|||
|
|||
Evan Carew wrote: Smitty, Ideally, I would like to treat this as a community project where the community contributes the expertise & labor and benefits from the data. Evan There is on such project already on the way in yahoo groups. You should be able to find it if you look. Essentially they are collaborating on the design and the poop is that if you collaborate you get a free set of the completed plans. Though that still isn't open source. Thier contribution requirement doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It isn't going to keep one of their widows from sueing the rest of them one one "contributing" member kills themselves doing something stupid. Their actually making themselves more exposed to liability that way, not less. They aught to just use code names and release the results anonymously. In a litigiously insane society, anonymity becomes a shelter for innovation. There are in fact a few sets of "documentation" available on the net gratis. One is a gyro the other is a glider. It has been the request of one such designer not to use the word "plans" because he is explicitly not recomending you build one and only use the docs as a point of study. I have done a decent amount of reading on the topic of your interest and am pleased overall at your enthusiasm. There are technical, financial and political problems that answer the question "why not?", in regards to building a cheap aircraft. It would take a few pages to document them all, and you haven't done enough research yourself to warrant the effort. Sufficed to say, the technical problems are the small ones. But I encourage you to continue with your research. Hopefully one day there will be enough folks to call "bull****" on the current situation and some change will come of it. Can I buy an "e" -Matt |
#25
|
|||
|
|||
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1 shrike, Interesting analysis. As one of the few who gets it, I think you can appreciate why I chose the open source solution to publishing the data. Any use of the community data is acceptance of an as-is contract where any derivative works may not be patented or hoarded as trade secrets. This also tends to insulate the technology publishers reasonably well from litigation. It is important to note that the point of this project is rather narrow. I am not advocating the development of a specific set of plans for a completed aircraft structure, but rather a set of procedures to set up a shop to build such a structure in the cheapest manner. A quick analysis on my part (followed up by data from other members on this list) identified labor costs as being the #1 largest cost in pricing an aircraft structure for sale in the LSA or small GA market. Granted, there are other issues such as political, high engine prices, high instrument prices, high materials prices, FBO desirability, etc. that I am not addressing here, however, one must start somewhere. Its even worth noting that should labor costs magically go to zero, the cost of a commercially made aircraft would still probably not go below 50K USD. Airframe + avionics + engine + labor Insurance Profit Overhead kit basic 912 Magic 20000 + 4000 + 16000 + ( 0 * 45 ) +10000 + 10000 + 1000 = 61000 As you can see, even getting the largest component down to zero still doesn't get you an airplane as cheap as an SUV ( for obvious reasons ), it does however, get you to the point where you can start to compete with the 69K LSA commercial planes from eastern europe today. At this point, you are free to start chipping away at the other high price items like the engine. For instance, an 89hp Jabiru can be had for 11k, thus saving 5K from the 912 price tag. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFDQud1pxCQXwV2bJARAnklAJ4jryaXMGtQdJY0U5W+NT poMA3IeQCePAub Jn3xPPx5mL02/rml5GbeYWY= =cIWS -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- |
#26
|
|||
|
|||
"Evan Carew" wrote:
Its even worth noting that should labor costs magically go to zero, the cost of a commercially made aircraft would still probably not go below 50K USD. Airframe + avionics + engine + labor Insurance Profit Overhead kit basic 912 Magic 20000 + 4000 + 16000 + ( 0 * 45 ) +10000 + 10000 + 1000 = 61000 Woah there, overhead of mere $1,000/unit is not possible. At 100 units annually, pretty good if there's many competitors, that will be only $100K. That's for manufacturing space and equipment, warranty costs, legal, accounting, information tech, administrative space, insurance other than product liability, taxes other than income, phone, utilites, janitorial, etc., etc. And where's your marketing costs? Advertising, promotional literature and videos, and say $50K total cost for just one sales guy, who'll be one busy beaver at 100 annual units. Figure $10K to go to AirVenture; wanna go to all the others? And gotta demo plane? Fred F. |
#27
|
|||
|
|||
Well said. A lot of people on this list have some idea what the
materials cost to build and airplane but they have no idea what it takes to run a business. A lot of people have accused the LSA manufacturers of price gouging and getting rich. My experience so far in this business is that a lot of people are making money off of LSA manufacturers. Air show exhibit space sellers, promotional video producers, brochure designers and printers, magazine advertising departments, logoed clothing makers and the companies that sell the raw materials and components for aircraft are the ones making all the money right now. LSA manufacturers are spending much more than they are making at this point (it is called investing for those of you in Rio Linda). At some point, one hopes the income will exceed the outgo. Time will tell. Rick Pellicciotti LightSportFlying.com |
#28
|
|||
|
|||
Evan Carew wrote: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 shrike, Interesting analysis. As one of the few who gets it, I think you can appreciate why I chose the open source solution to publishing the data. Any use of the community data is acceptance of an as-is contract where any derivative works may not be patented or hoarded as trade secrets. This also tends to insulate the technology publishers reasonably well from litigation. Sometimes the contract is the end of the negotiation. Sometimes it is the beginning. A hold harmless agreement; though common in end user licenses; are trounced by safety law. In most states you cannot legally sign away your own right to safety. Consequently you'll find many software agreements specically disclaim the use of the software in situations requiring fault tolerance. For example, MS would really you rather NOT use Winblows to run say a pacemaker. So while the open source license protects the right to redistribution it only marginally protects the authors. In the case of Open Engineering an aircraft that exposure is amplified. It is important to note that the point of this project is rather narrow. I am not advocating the development of a specific set of plans for a completed aircraft structure, but rather a set of procedures to set up a shop to build such a structure in the cheapest manner. A quick analysis on my part (followed up by data from other members on this list) identified labor costs as being the #1 largest cost in pricing an aircraft structure for sale in the LSA or small GA market. Granted, there are other issues such as political, high engine prices, high instrument prices, high materials prices, FBO desirability, etc. that I am not addressing here, however, one must start somewhere. Yes you do have to start somewhere. Try Excel, and reading the certification requirements in the FARS. (Available online) All the stuff your talking about will be defined more by the financial model of the company, than it will by the aircraft selected. The bird has to fit into the budget, the budget doesn't fit the bird. (Unless your on a government contract) To reiterate the aircraft is the _small_ part. And while everybody is enthusiastic about aircraft technology, very few people have the patience to sit in front of a spread sheet or a lawbook and fidget until they understand those issues. Labor _hours_ can be drastically reduced with modern tooling, there is no question about that. Whether manufacturing _costs_ can be is a different issue. You have to figure land labor and capital as a percentage of projected revenues to be able to tell whether the new tooling makes sense. Stop thinking about the plane. Start thinking about the financial model that supports the project. Then start thinking about the people who wouldn't want you to succeed and what they would do to prevent you from succeeding. (The people you would put out of business) That will give you a picture of the bull you are casually talking about riding. Once you have that picture ask youself whether you're still interested in riding it. This whole thread is really about defining what constitutes "barrier to entry" in the light aircraft market. There is a whole science involved in doing what your doing. I think the reason your getting a lot of attitude is that your talking about financial issues in a engineering forum. Really you should start addressing your questions to somebody who understands business finance. You've got the cart before the ox IMHO. If your interested in open-sourcing and distributing a free aircraft design optimized for modern tooling I totally applaud. Then you best bet is to set up a non-profit to do that (Can be done online for ~$250), and start soliciting help. Once you have one or two designers and robot guy on board, start soliciting the automotive manufacturers to lend you an old robot to test your theories. Write a few grant proposals. They might just give you one to write it off as a donation. If you associated the project with a University you'd probably get a lot better response. You can do it! But right now your barking up the wrong tree. Come back to this forum when you have questions about the plane, and not about the financial issues. Right now your just ****ing people off. -Matt SNIP |
#29
|
|||
|
|||
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1 TaxMan, As a first step, then, lets agree on some realistic commercial numbers. From earlier comments, Overhead / plane where 50 & 100 are sold / year look like: Airframe + avionics + engine + labor Insurance Profit Overhead kit basic 912 Magic 20000 + 4000 + 16000 + ( 0 * 45 ) +10000 + 10000 + 1000 = 61000 12000 rent + 50000 sales + 20000 marketing + 10000 general marketing = 92K Divided over 50 units per year = 1800 / unit Divided over 100 units per year = ~1000 / unit I would like however for you to keep in mind that the purpose of this exercise is to reduce the process cost of a LSA airframe, not to spend time figuring the minutia of how cheaply to run a company. This community effort's purpose is to prove a reduced airframe production cost in the form of a published procedure with estimated costs, not prove a commercial price. If this overhead cost structure looks even close to what "sounds good", then I think we should put this issue to bed. Since we are talking about building reference structures to get an idea of the direction and cost of a process, then I think we can agree that the same model should apply to the initial commercial reference numbers, i.e., all things being equal, if you can take a large chunk off one or two of the biggest numbers, then you have solved the problem. Overhead, as you can see, is not one of the biggest numbers. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFDQ9xNpxCQXwV2bJARAkG8AKC6nhOhFMKY6+BW0z84my Z+vvULDACfY9U6 U0nSft/QCn3IAAQgGH/7tR0= =I8Mb -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- |
#30
|
|||
|
|||
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1 shrike, I'm not trying to attract flames here, but this is exactly an engineering issue. Other issues having to do with entry into the market are not part of this discussion. There are already other companies in this market who could choose to use this technology to reduce their costs for instance. The point is NOT to define a new viable company with a new process, but rather to inform those already in the business, or those just getting started of at least one cheap process. In addition, since we aren't defining an actual airframe, but rather a process, liability issues will be minimized. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFDQ+FdpxCQXwV2bJARAsU2AKCzM/rbGmp76/rogxrfdDgPE2IXVACaA5b+ WQl/BLqKhUfmFZUno8VstEo= =gqRd -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
High Cost of Sportplanes | Gordon Arnaut | Home Built | 110 | November 18th 05 10:02 AM |
Enjoy High Quality incredible low cost PC-to-phone and broadband phone services | John | Home Built | 0 | May 19th 05 02:58 PM |
Fwd: [BD4] Source of HIGH CHTs on O-320 and O-360 FOUND! | Bruce A. Frank | Home Built | 1 | July 4th 04 07:28 PM |
Talk about the high cost of aviation! | C J Campbell | Piloting | 15 | August 12th 03 04:09 AM |
Could it happen he The High Cost of Operating in Europe | Larry Dighera | Piloting | 5 | July 14th 03 02:34 AM |