Fix the high cost [Was:] High Cost of Sportplanes

Anyone in the fiberglass / aluminum sheet metal industry ( or other
successful enthusiasts ) interested in contributing to some
experimentation. If you are interested, and willing to have the results
released to the public, I think we could make a real contribution to
this debate & perhaps offer some solutions to the small plane industries
labor problem.

What I am thinking of is a bake off to design two reference structures.
One of fiberglass & one of aluminum. Each must be finished (primed &
painted), and each must have an exact tally of labor for construction. A
separate tally should include the cost (tho not labor) involved in the
tooling.

The goal of this bake off is to provide the industry with a method which
could produce an airframe with 500Hrs or less of labor, and a defined
amount of materials. Since there seems to be a kind of religious quality
to preferences for building materials, both general types will be used,
thus providing a gage by which others might choose their preferred
construction method.

To start the bake off, two reference structures, one for each building
method, would have to be designed in CAD. These reference structures
would each have the same structural goals and strength specs. Each
reference structure would not necessarily have to be to scale. Remember,
the goal here is NOT to prove that one construction technique is
superior to another, but rather to provide a choice of feasible methods
to the commercial LSA designer/builder. If designed in a public forum
such as this one, the structure & building techniques would be peer
reviewed & presumably employ the full collection of best construction
practices, and should yield procedures simple and cheap enough to be
used by companies of limited means.

If enough people with the experience and means to volunteer for this
first phase, then the remaining phases would be worth hashing out later.