LS-4 ? What about 1-26 ?

Ian Cant wrote:

Eric Greenwell maintains, and I am sure he is right,
that increased performance adds cost and smaller size
reduces cost, and that many potential owners would
be 'happy' with LS-4 performance in a smaller and more
modern design.

What about a modern 1-26 ? Could it be made affordable
and attractive enough to sell 800-1000 copies ? Would
the reduction in performance goal from 40:1 to 23:1
really reduce the selling price a lot ? Or are we
at a point in the performance/cost curve where a reduction
in L/D [for any size of glider] does not save a bunch
of cost but an increase [whether by refinement of an
existing design or a clean-sheet new design] costs
a whole bundle ?

I suspect that the economics of sailplane production
are not driven by material costs or design sophistication,
but by issues of labor costs, marketing costs, certification
and insurance - and above all, the achieved market
share. Anyone know some real-world figures to argue
from ?

Ian





Ages ago, a similar question was asked. One of the Schweizer brothers
wrote back and said the problem was that they would have to buy a
liablility policy for the production run. The policy payment came out
to $16,000 for each glider.

"m pautz" wrote in message
news:Ub7ld.499010$mD.298982@attbi_s02...


Ian Cant wrote:

Eric Greenwell maintains, and I am sure he is right,
that increased performance adds cost and smaller size
reduces cost, and that many potential owners would
be 'happy' with LS-4 performance in a smaller and more
modern design.

What about a modern 1-26 ? Could it be made affordable
and attractive enough to sell 800-1000 copies ? Would
the reduction in performance goal from 40:1 to 23:1
really reduce the selling price a lot ? Or are we
at a point in the performance/cost curve where a reduction
in L/D [for any size of glider] does not save a bunch
of cost but an increase [whether by refinement of an
existing design or a clean-sheet new design] costs
a whole bundle ?

I suspect that the economics of sailplane production
are not driven by material costs or design sophistication,
but by issues of labor costs, marketing costs, certification
and insurance - and above all, the achieved market
share. Anyone know some real-world figures to argue
from ?

Ian





Ages ago, a similar question was asked. One of the Schweizer brothers
wrote back and said the problem was that they would have to buy a
liablility policy for the production run. The policy payment came out
to $16,000 for each glider.


People I'm acquainted with that produce sports equipment set up their
production so that all equipment and facility is leased, not owned. The
business is strictly inventory and accounts receivable, every thing else is
at arm's length, so that if plaintiffs should ever prevail, they are welcome
to the empty space, desk, and chair. If you have to insure to protect real
property as part of the means of production, your liability exposure is
extremely high and has to be protected by passing this cost onto the
consumer. Sadly, it's the state of American business. Most small
entrepanuers I know have layered, non-asset, interests these days.

Frank Whiteley

What I think we need is a new way of building gliders.

You cannot reduce certification costs nor development costs but you can
reduce material and labour costs.

What I had in mind when I made my earlier post re mass production was not a
production line that produces a glider a day or anything that optimistic.
However there has got be another smallish step up from what we currently do
that will result in a dramatic reduction in the costs and hence price. The
question is what is the critical mass number that will give us this
production advantage ... I dunno the answer - I doubt anyone does. It is
well known (as one other post states) that Cessna produced airplanes in
approx 300 hours. That is a long way from where we are currently at for
composite gliders ... and that is for a much more complex airplane than any
glider. The question is simply what level of tooling and investment is
required to get to this next level and what gains will that give us in
production cost and hence volume.

Assuming a composite glider, what I have in mind is tape laying machines,
filament winding, RTM methods etc. All other areas of the composites
industry are moving this way - I am sure sailplanes will eventually. There
are also other innovative ways to build sailplanes if we are really willing
to think outside the square. Also CNC machines for all metal parts etc. Also
the design is important we need more efficient design processes and tools
and more effort needs to be invested to reduce parts count. Perhaps there is
a better way to build a composite airframe than the standard foam sandwich
approach. We will not know unless we challenge ourselves to do it.

The Sparrow Hawk while a commendable design effort will never be a
commercial success (as another poster pointed out). It is too labour
intensive to build, the cost of materials (Toray carbon prepregs I seem to
recall) are too expensive (carbon prepreg tape is 1/4 the price woven cloth
per metre sq for instance) and it is not certificated which significantly
reduces the size of the potential market (and the design is barely legal
under Part 103).

Similarly the discussion on kits gliders is a bad example when compared to
say an LS-4. These are only cheap because the builder has to invest a lot of
labour and because they are not certificated.

There is ample evidence in the hang glider world and indeed in other leisure
sport products that the volume would increase dramatically if the price
could be reduced. Imagine if you could sell a certified APIS for 150% of a
current list price of a competition standard hang glider what that would do
to the volume of glider sales. Waiting in a queue for a club glider would be
a thing of the past - you would simply buy your own - the increase in volume
would come from within the existing gliding fraterity, not to mention the
more people the sport would attract and retain through greater
affordability. I don't know exactly how many hang gliders are sold annually
but recent articles I have read indicate that it is thousands a year. Anyone
got any hard data ????? How many gliders do Schempp Hirth, DG, et al sell a
year ... anyone got some data ?????

Finally you don't need to point out that the above is somewhat idealistic. I
am very aware of this but unless we look to the future, challenge ourselves
to do better and make significant progress in the direction of costs and
affordability we will not have a viable sport. Someone has to start to do
the dreaming if we are going to have any hope of solving the problem. Anyone
share that vision ?







"F.L. Whiteley" wrote in message
...

"m pautz" wrote in message
news:Ub7ld.499010$mD.298982@attbi_s02...


Ian Cant wrote:

Eric Greenwell maintains, and I am sure he is right,
that increased performance adds cost and smaller size
reduces cost, and that many potential owners would
be 'happy' with LS-4 performance in a smaller and more
modern design.

What about a modern 1-26 ? Could it be made affordable
and attractive enough to sell 800-1000 copies ? Would
the reduction in performance goal from 40:1 to 23:1
really reduce the selling price a lot ? Or are we
at a point in the performance/cost curve where a reduction
in L/D [for any size of glider] does not save a bunch
of cost but an increase [whether by refinement of an
existing design or a clean-sheet new design] costs
a whole bundle ?

I suspect that the economics of sailplane production
are not driven by material costs or design sophistication,
but by issues of labor costs, marketing costs, certification
and insurance - and above all, the achieved market
share. Anyone know some real-world figures to argue
from ?

Ian





Ages ago, a similar question was asked. One of the Schweizer brothers
wrote back and said the problem was that they would have to buy a
liablility policy for the production run. The policy payment came out
to $16,000 for each glider.


People I'm acquainted with that produce sports equipment set up their
production so that all equipment and facility is leased, not owned. The
business is strictly inventory and accounts receivable, every thing else
is
at arm's length, so that if plaintiffs should ever prevail, they are
welcome
to the empty space, desk, and chair. If you have to insure to protect
real
property as part of the means of production, your liability exposure is
extremely high and has to be protected by passing this cost onto the
consumer. Sadly, it's the state of American business. Most small
entrepanuers I know have layered, non-asset, interests these days.

Frank Whiteley

May be way off but I recall Tom knauff talking about Schemp Hirth using
about 400 hours per Discus / Ventus ?

What I think we need is a new way of building gliders.

You cannot reduce certification costs nor development costs but you can
reduce material and labour costs.

What I had in mind when I made my earlier post re mass production was not a
production line that produces a glider a day or anything that optimistic.
However there has got be another smallish step up from what we currently do
that will result in a dramatic reduction in the costs and hence price. The
question is what is the critical mass number that will give us this
production advantage ... I dunno the answer - I doubt anyone does. It is
well known (as one other post states) that Cessna produced airplanes in
approx 300 hours. That is a long way from where we are currently at for
composite gliders ... and that is for a much more complex airplane than any
glider. The question is simply what level of tooling and investment is
required to get to this next level and what gains will that give us in
production cost and hence volume.

Assuming a composite glider, what I have in mind is tape laying machines,
filament winding, RTM methods etc. All other areas of the composites
industry are moving this way - I am sure sailplanes will eventually. There
are also other innovative ways to build sailplanes if we are really willing
to think outside the square. Also CNC machines for all metal parts etc. Also
the design is important we need more efficient design processes and tools
and more effort needs to be invested to reduce parts count. Perhaps there is
a better way to build a composite airframe than the standard foam sandwich
approach. We will not know unless we challenge ourselves to do it.

The Sparrow Hawk while a commendable design effort will never be a
commercial success (as another poster pointed out). It is too labour
intensive to build, the cost of materials (Toray carbon prepregs I seem to
recall) are too expensive (carbon prepreg tape is 1/4 the price woven cloth
per metre sq for instance) and it is not certificated which significantly
reduces the size of the potential market (and the design is barely legal
under Part 103).

Similarly the discussion on kits gliders is a bad example when compared to
say an LS-4. These are only cheap because the builder has to invest a lot of
labour and because they are not certificated.

There is ample evidence in the hang glider world and indeed in other leisure
sport products that the volume would increase dramatically if the price
could be reduced. Imagine if you could sell a certified APIS for 150% of a
current list price of a competition standard hang glider what that would do
to the volume of glider sales. Waiting in a queue for a club glider would be
a thing of the past - you would simply buy your own - the increase in volume
would come from within the existing gliding fraterity, not to mention the
more people the sport would attract and retain through greater
affordability. I don't know exactly how many hang gliders are sold annually
but recent articles I have read indicate that it is thousands a year. Anyone
got any hard data ????? How many gliders do Schempp Hirth, DG, et al sell a
year ... anyone got some data ?????

Finally you don't need to point out that the above is somewhat idealistic. I
am very aware of this but unless we look to the future, challenge ourselves
to do better and make significant progress in the direction of costs and
affordability we will not have a viable sport. Someone has to start to do
the dreaming if we are going to have any hope of solving the problem. Anyone
share that vision ?

Finally you don't need to point out that the above is somewhat idealistic. I
am very aware of this but unless we look to the future, challenge ourselves
to do better and make significant progress in the direction of costs and
affordability we will not have a viable sport. Someone has to start to do
the dreaming if we are going to have any hope of solving the problem. Anyone
share that vision ?

Well, since I seem to dwell a lot in the idealistic sense when it
comes to glider design/building I'll chime in.

My vision of my idealistic glider would be a self-launcher. It would
be something between a TST-10 and an Apis 15m.

The engine installation would be an engine on a stick, I would look
into using the extension/retraction system the Russia AC-5M uses,
electric start would be good.......since this engine already exists
with the MZ-35, I would probably choose this engine.....although it
seems 2-stroke technology is booming these days....just look at the
power plants being developed for the powered parachutes........the
Cors-Air Black devil would even work for what I have in mind. Probably
there are even more out there that I am unaware of, and I have done
lot's of homework on this subject.

The mission statement for this sailplane would not be for racing, it
would be tailored towards recreational flying.

It would look sexy; D2 type planform with a modified D2/V2 type
fuselage shape.....because I think these are archetypes of modern
sailplane design......here is where I end my similarities.........I do
not need a racer, or a heavy ship, or a ship with all the modern
accoutrements......these are the refinements that make a glider so
expensive. I believe the R & D that goes into these ships is cutting
edge: airfoils, boundry layer devices, tooling......this all adds up,
as it should, and pilots who buy and fly these masterpieces have every
right to be proud and have high expectations for performance and
quality.

Now.....back to my dream machine. This ship would be built using wet
layup technolgy, it would use a lot of carbon, the wings would be
sandwich construction and the fuselage would be carbon with ring
bulkheads and stringers. It is somewhat true that the cockpits of
these "lightweights" are sparse, but I believe with proper use of
Kevlar and a combination of integral seat and cockpit longerons a safe
and lightweight fuselage could be made.

I would strive to make the parts count as small as possible to
minimize the cost in time and $$. A set of molds could be made if
there was interest in such an idea, to facilitate making multiple
bits, but there are other tried and true manufacturing methods a guy
could use to make it a one-off and not incur the expense of hard
tooling......the trade off is hours of labor to fair the outer
surfaces to your level of quality.

I really believe that an elegant, nice performing ship is possible to
manufacture and with diligence could be done and sold for a price a
lot of us would find appealing.

Well, that's my dream of a west-side sailplane.

Cheers,
Brad
199Ak

smjmitchell wrote:

What I think we need is a new way of building gliders.

I suspect we may be going at this backwards, and what we need is a
better way to increase the number of glider pilots. This will increase
the demand for gliders, allowing more manufacturers to produce gliders
in greater volume, and lower costs.

snip


There is ample evidence in the hang glider world and indeed in other leisure
sport products that the volume would increase dramatically if the price
could be reduced. Imagine if you could sell a certified APIS for 150% of a
current list price of a competition standard hang glider what that would do
to the volume of glider sales.

There are already gliders available to the hang glider pilots with much
superior performance to a competition hang glider for _same_ price as
competition hang glider. Take a look at the used gliders available: the
Ka-6 and even the 1-26 can meet your target.

There is much more to the issue than cost and performance. The barriers
to entering the sport are not the cost of a new glider, or the hang
glider pilots would be snapping up all these aircraft. Even a PW5 seems
like an exotic starship to a hang glider pilot that gets 15:1, and it is
cheaper to own and fly than a competition hang glider (former hang
glider pilots, now sailplane pilots, tell me this true).

Waiting in a queue for a club glider would be
a thing of the past - you would simply buy your own - the increase in volume
would come from within the existing gliding fraterity, not to mention the
more people the sport would attract and retain through greater
affordability. I don't know exactly how many hang gliders are sold annually
but recent articles I have read indicate that it is thousands a year. Anyone
got any hard data ????? How many gliders do Schempp Hirth, DG, et al sell a
year ... anyone got some data ?????

Without a growing sport, any sales increase we make within the present
community will be short-lived, because after a few years, everyone that
wants a glider will have one, and the volume will drop off. These things
aren't like cars - they last for a long, long time, and have to crashed
badly to remove them from the fleet.

Having lower cost gliders will help the sport, of course, but I think it
the effect is being overestimated. When someone decides to start flying
lessons, it is not because they see a new LS4 can be bought for $30,000
instead of $40,000.

To sustain the large volume of production that we speculate may be
needed to lower costs means we have to have many more people becoming
serious sailplane pilots (serious enough to buy a glider) every year,
year after year, to build the market for all those gliders.

Frankly, we already have cheap gliders via the used market and the
medium performance gliders. What we don't have is cheap, new, high
performance gliders so lusted for by the RAS pilots, but these are not
the gliders that will bring in new pilots.


Finally you don't need to point out that the above is somewhat idealistic. I
am very aware of this but unless we look to the future, challenge ourselves
to do better and make significant progress in the direction of costs and
affordability we will not have a viable sport. Someone has to start to do
the dreaming if we are going to have any hope of solving the problem. Anyone
share that vision ?

If I am right, that the viability of the sport does not depend on cheap,
new, high performance gliders, perhaps this is a good thing: it might be
more difficult to solve that high-volume production problem than the one
of getting more people into the sport and retaining them by improving
access to the sport by other means.

--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

Eric Greenwell wrote:

If I am right, that the viability of the sport does not depend on cheap,
new, high performance gliders, perhaps this is a good thing: it might be
more difficult to solve that high-volume production problem than the one
of getting more people into the sport and retaining them by improving
access to the sport by other means.

The problem isn't too few gliders, it's
NOT ENOUGH GLIDER PILOTS!

To get more glider pilots, you need more instructors
(who charge low rates). One source for these instructors is
cross-training the USUA and EAA ultralight instructors, and
cross-training ASEL CFIs (at least to the Sport Pilot level).

The two ways to grow the sport are to get youth, or get
pilots from other airsports.

If I were a glider manufacturer, I'd make LSA gliders
and advertise in the Ultralight, Hang Glider, and
Experimental magazines and conventions.

Have any of you noticed that gliders weren't even mentioned in the
new Sport Pilot and LSA magazine? And there are no glider pictures
in the Sport Pilot branch color brochures and briefings...

I would have expected at least the SZD 50-3 USA distributor to have
noticed this and made some phone calls.

There is a whole group of (sometimes aging) airsport enthusiasts
who are deciding the freezing cold open air in their face
and the lack of protection on landing/crashing/crumpling
in their hang gliders and ultralights is a bad thing.

They want gliders, they just don't know about them...
--

------------+
Mark J. Boyd

In article ,
Eric Greenwell wrote:

There are already gliders available to the hang glider pilots with much
superior performance to a competition hang glider for _same_ price as
competition hang glider. Take a look at the used gliders available: the
Ka-6 and even the 1-26 can meet your target.

I don't know why people keep saying things like this. You can *not*
significantly grow gliding by people buying Ka-6's or 1-26's. They
aren't *MAKING* them any more, there is a only a very limited number
around, and if you made new ones they'd cost as much or more as a PW-5
(whcih is better than either of them, albiet marginally in the case of
the K6) anyway.

--
Bruce | 41.1670S | \ spoken | -+-
Hoult | 174.8263E | /\ here. | ----------O----------

"smjmitchell" wrote in message
u...
What I think we need is a new way of building gliders.
snip
Assuming a composite glider, what I have in mind is tape laying machines,
filament winding, RTM methods etc. All other areas of the composites
industry are moving this way - I am sure sailplanes will eventually. There
are also other innovative ways to build sailplanes if we are really
willing
to think outside the square. Also CNC machines for all metal parts etc.
Also
the design is important we need more efficient design processes and tools
and more effort needs to be invested to reduce parts count. Perhaps there
is
a better way to build a composite airframe than the standard foam sandwich
approach. We will not know unless we challenge ourselves to do it.

A significant part of Burt Rutan's Boomerang was built using filament
winding process. Pre-preg composites are promising and reduce layup time.
However, there may be real problems repairing damage to such components. So
frontend gains may lead to larger backend costs. I would expect some impact
on insurance rates as a result. It may be possible to make the advantages
outweigh the disadvantages.

Frank Whiteley

In article , "smjmitchell"
writes:

There is ample evidence in the hang glider world and indeed in other leisure
sport products that the volume would increase dramatically if the price
could be reduced.

I haven't been active in hang gliding in several years so I must have missed
the dramatic increase in activity after the price reduction. All I've heard
about is the reduction in hang gliding worldwide. That even counting
paragliding as part on hang gliding.
The Apis (kit) is 166% the cost of an Atos VX (rigid wind hang glider). $12K vs
$20K.
I don't think it's the rise in cost, it's the change in society.

Steve