Will Kit Aviation SURVIVE 2024? Industry Leaders SPEAK OUT! 

Interesting. I've only followed aviation for a few years but still got the impression that kits is a thin margin business vulnerable to bankruptcies and I would be one of the 'younger' guys that believe in composites. Partly I'm looking at Cirrus which used to be a troubled kitmaker and turned certified and now dominates. A somewhat modern bird with modern features. That's one data point. Another is gliders where engineering excellence is key for amazing performance and those are all composites and beautiful in form. Specifically a polish glider called Gekon weighs only 69kg with everything. And a fourth is french Elixir which does a "one shot" process where the fuselage is one single piece in a fast process. I've heard it said that composites is labor intensive, that's just very hard to believe when talking 2000 hour build time for a metal kit. Rather than make two sides and glue them together, go through the slightly awkward lay up of a single piece fuselage. With rigs and tools, that must just be very possible and very worth the initial effort so a plane can be made at lightning speed. And carbon fiber really pays for itself in the advantages over glass and is not that expensive to begin with. With a double curved shape carbon fiber is rigid as a thin shell without frames, bulkheads or stringers. That's just hard to beat for weight and ease of manufacture. A plane can be a rather simple thing, much simpler than a modern car. And with a great light construction I figure you can skip flaps to make it that much cleaner. Imagine if it could be manufactured anywhere close to how a car bumper is formed in thermoplastics. 2000 hour build time just has to limit your target audience so I'm asking would you be vastly better off with a beautiful looking factory built simple clean composite bird? Either LSA or better yet part23 which must be doable if it consists of a few large strong pieces that can't metal fatigue. Mojogrip built his Sling kitplane and he said the final price was over 300k. A herculean 1 year effort and still over 300k. Weigh that against a 200k composite plane with part23 stamp, the market difference just has to be staggering. And there are some 3D printers now in the 1 meter class for prosumer money so it can be a repeatable CAD driven inexpensive process to make molds. Like Tesla has demonstrated, good looks is everything for a product. If good aero and carbon fiber gives you great performance and fuel economy then you have 3 or 4 winning parameters like Tesla did. With no cost disadvantage.

Whew @DanFrederiksen, you covered a lot of ground there, but the simple answer is "no." Composites are a lot more labor intensive than metal aircraft (just ask anyone who has built even the most modern composite aircraft kit), and typically an order of magnitude more expensive. Sling Tsi build cost starts at about $140,000 if you build it yourself and equip it to a reasonable level. Spending $300,000 is possible with builder assistance services factored-in and all the bells & whistles. That's where kit building gets REALLY expensive with the Tsi or any other kit aircraft design, making it more comparable to a Part 23 certified aircraft cost (remember to compare apples-to-apples: compare the Tsi to the RV-10 and certified 4-place aircraft new off the production line with similar equipment). Also, no newly designed Part23 type certified aircraft, especially all-composite, will ever cost only $200,000 again. Part23 certification adds too much cost in both the certification cost and the ongoing compliance requirements, even after the rewrite to the rule several years ago. Composites do fatigue over-time. A lot of the beautiful (and very expensive) composite sailplanes that you mentioned are hour-limited due to expected fatigue life and the fact that composite structures are very difficult to inspect, and even more difficult (read: prohibitively involved and expensive) to repair if there is a structural issue in the composite structure. Bottom line: You are not wrong on many of your points, and the future is very exciting with regard to additive manufacturing, etc., however, today, metal aircraft are easier to build for the typical kit builder, less expensive, easier to inspect and repair, etc. as we all talked about in this video. Will that still be the case tomorrow? I think so, but some of the new technologies you mention might change that -- maybe you can be the person to make that happen!

Citation on my Sling build cost references from one of our other favorite aviation RU-vidrs: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-vpyL66M4HMI.htmlsi=gZchGbSFLeOBWUtc

@@SonexLLC but a sling is not certified, that's key point. Gogetair G750 915 is a comparable certified plane, much better looking, composite construction and 270k€ sale price. Same price or cheaper than the Sling. And indeed I believe Sling is moving to composite planes. You say 200k is unattainable but that's a lot of money. If you take a look at a hot tub being constructed, complex shape, fiberglass construction and they retail for 5000$. I did some napkin math and carbon fiber cloth for a typical plane size might be 6k$. There is wiggle room up to 200k. And it's my impression that composite airframes are sold with infinite life whereas metal are given 20 years to live. On top of composites typically having great excess of strength. Fiberglass being something like 20x stronger than soft steel by weight and carbon being 40x. No small margin. The comfortable familiarity of sheet and rivet doesn't mean it's the way. Just the form freedom of composites should disqualify sheet metal. Your subsonex in a CF version might weigh less than half with 1/3 the drag. Incomparably greater ramp appeal. And down the line it could have a turbofan engine instead of turbojet and double fuel economy that way as well. Rather than a curiosity could suddenly be a real world formidable aircraft. single piece composite fuselage. Think about it.

@@DanFrederiksen oh boy, I should have never taken the bait by responding to your first comment 🤣. I really believe your assertions here are naive, but I’m not going to spend any more time debating it with you here. You can prove me wrong by doing what you’re suggesting: bring such an aircraft to market. Like I said before, maybe you’re the guy to pull it off!

Yes, most RU-vidrs are all about sensationalism and getting the clicks, sadly. There are a few exceptions, but I can count them on one hand and I am subscribed to well over 100 channels.

Interesting. I've only followed aviation for a few years but still got the impression that kits is a thin margin business vulnerable to bankruptcies and I would be one of the 'younger' guys that believe in composites. Partly I'm looking at Cirrus which used to be a troubled kitmaker and turned certified and now dominates. A somewhat modern bird with modern features. That's one data point. Another is gliders where engineering excellence is key for amazing performance and those are all composites and beautiful in form. Specifically a polish glider called Gekon weighs only 69kg with everything. And a fourth is french Elixir which does a "one shot" process where the fuselage is one single piece in a fast process. I've heard it said that composites is labor intensive, that's just very hard to believe when talking 2000 hour build time for a metal kit. Rather than make two sides and glue them together, go through the slightly awkward lay up of a single piece fuselage. With rigs and tools, that must just be very possible and very worth the initial effort so a plane can be made at lightning speed. And carbon fiber really pays for itself in the advantages over glass and is not that expensive to begin with. With a double curved shape carbon fiber is rigid as a thin shell without frames, bulkheads or stringers. That's just hard to beat for weight and ease of manufacture. A plane can be a rather simple thing, much simpler than a modern car. And with a great light construction I figure you can skip flaps to make it that much cleaner. Imagine if it could be manufactured anywhere close to how a car bumper is formed in thermoplastics. 2000 hour build time just has to limit your target audience so I'm asking would you be vastly better off with a beautiful looking factory built simple clean composite bird? Either LSA or better yet part23 which must be doable if it consists of a few large strong pieces that can't metal fatigue. Mojogrip built his Sling kitplane and he said the final price was over 300k. A herculean 1 year effort and still over 300k. Weigh that against a 200k composite plane with part23 stamp, the market difference just has to be staggering. And there are some 3D printers now in the 1 meter class for prosumer money so it can be a repeatable CAD driven inexpensive process to make molds. Like Tesla has demonstrated, good looks is everything for a product. If good aero and carbon fiber gives you great performance and fuel economy then you have 3 or 4 winning parameters like Tesla did. With no cost disadvantage.

Yes if you look at the prices how high they went up on kit planes for instance the Titan that price has skyrocketed. I have a kids plane on order. I feel I'm paying too much for it. The next one I'm building 100% from scratch. The parts I can't build. Well I'll buy them from who I don't know. It depends on the part and who's selling it

To be honest a Cheetah is still a solid machine and it's hard to beat the value with any kit aircraft even before 2020 (even factoring in the annuals and so-on.)

Majority? Talk about all of them 80k for a quick build kit for a bearhawk 4 a rag and tube plane wow 80k for something you still have to build hang an engine ect ect. Boomers ruined it for the next generation. The only way i can/could afford a plane is totally scratch built, and use as many parts from anything but aircraft. I have plans for a wag aero sportsman 2+2. I have the tubing i started the fuselage a month ago. probably build a corvair engine for it, since i can actually build it or maybe a chevy 2.8 v-6, if i can find a gearbox for the prop

Unlike the model airplane world the GA "RTF" alternative isn't exactly affordably priced compared to the DIY version. That said with MOSAIC that may start to change a little, but we'll have to see.

@@scottwatrous I think you miss my point. If you are in the business, you need to develop your own customer base. There is no "supply" of homebuilders out there because of the collapse of the model airplane building hobby. These mfg need to team with local schools, boy and girl scouts, young eagles, etc and sponsor programs where young people get a chance to build and fly model airplanes and make some parts for full size homebuilts, and go for rides (young eagles). This industry is clearly not a case of "build it and they will come". There is nobody coming for any type of homebuilt aircraft unless folks commit to developing a customer base.

@@KlingbergWingMkII I see what you mean, and I agree in that it will be important to get more people hands on with building aircraft things and show that it is possible. I don't know if the RC market shifting away from DIY is the core issue here but certainly it reflects a shifting focus on a larger scale.

I operated a model kit manufacturing business from 2000 to 2005. A big issue with building RC kits was that an ARF will cost about the same as a kit once you add all the extras (covering, etc). At this point even I am not interested in building an RC kit. However, I did build a Kitfox, finished building a Zenith CH601, and now I'm restoring a Cozy. All this since 2015. I think the kit aircraft market is different from the GA market in that you end up with a higher performance aircraft for much less money and you can to so much more to them.

We still use Just-in-time inventory for new kits, but of course, we do have to stock some service parts.

This does not work for small manufacturing companies. Too many variables. Most small companies have only 1 to 2 months reserve cash on hand and have a hard time getting financing for more inventory. It’s also hard to predict sales month-to-month so you don’t know what your demand is going to be

Distributors and Mills in some cases were not even willing to quote pricing that far out. Therefore they had no idea what they would be paying. This happened to me on a much larger scale aerospace business. Still occurring in pockets as of Q2 2024. Getting better, slowly.

Ok so your saying that a Rotax engine is not way overpriced?

Hear, hear. If folks would stop listening to the BS news stations and use their own heads they would realize that the "inflation" story is nonsense. Where I live in California, the price of food rose temporarily during the pandemic and fell back. The oil companies play more games in my state than most others', but the gas prices here also fell back to pre-pandemic levels. Although high, the inflation in rents and home prices have flattened. The price of labor, aluminum sheet, and all other resources that are used by kit manufacturers have not seen "soaring inflation", LOOK IT UP! With that said, there is nothing wrong with the kit manufacturers raising prices when growing demand allows for it. It is easier to manage a luxury goods company experiencing high growth with price increases rather than trying to meet the high growth at current prices. The Van's story is one of mismanagement during a difficult period of HIGH DEMAND, not a downturn or inflation. They will fix the management problem and be back with a strong company... and higher prices.

@@kenfawcett4006 Profit margins are high, but they are not overpriced. They are priced appropriately based on market forces: supply and demand. What drives profit margins down is competition. The growth in demand has created an opportunity for new firms to join the market.

You think the S-21, RVs, etc., are ugly?

@@LTVoyager 🦕🦖

BD-4C

Be thankful you're able to retire. Im 32, i put a little bit away but im almost certain that ill have to work till i drop dead just to pay for my home and bills. Thanks for the broken economy

​@@ktanner11Here in Australia retirees complain about costs when they already have several homes making it ridiculously expensive for younger generations. Boomers had such easy lives yet they insist they have it difficult because they dont have the luxuries they had when they were younger.