Mike Freeman wrote: > Since Dan Diehl already is equipped to do it and that's his trade why > not see if he will do it for a price.
I talked to Dan at length this morning, and not only is he pretty sure he'd lose money doing it, he might have convinced me not to do it either! Without going into the details of what he said, I'll try to answer "why". He's sold exactly one set of skins in the last year, and mostly because he's informed other potential buyers that the new airfoil is the hot ticket, and they ought use it instead of the 70 year old RAF48. To tool up to build a new wing skin would not be cheap. He's pretty sure he'd never get his money back for the tooling, and I'm sure Jeannette would echo that sentiment with the money she spent tooling up for her wing skins (although admittedly, those are RAF48 molds). Couple that with material cost escalation over the years, and Dan says he's already building skins "for free as a favor" now, so he has no incentive to continue making them (and I don't blame him). And this is from a guy who's "in the business", so you've really got to wonder if there's a "business case" for an outsider with day job! Also, the KR is built by people on a budget...we all know that. We're mostly a bunch of cheapskates. Many of them are retired and money is more valuable than time. Also, there's something about the individuality of building almost everything yourself, and that appeals to most KR builders. And it's not really that tough to build a set of wings the way the plans call for. I have to admit that it went a lot easier than I'd thought. People seem to be managing to carve them out, despite the sanding involved afterwards! I invited Dan to next year's Gathering, and I think he'll be there. If not, I'll fly out and have a beer with him one night and talk about "the old days". He says he and Marty both are kicking themselves for selling their KRs... Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net
