Lincoln, Build vs. buy; is it just an economic question?
As we all know, the AVA is almost an exact copy of Mark Drela's Bubble Dancer. It is a little bigger and a little heavier, but other than that, we can consider it the Bubble Dancer ARF. But is it a good value, or is it a high priced package? A group of guys at my club got together and made up Bubble Dancer kits this past winter, five of them. It included a premade molded fuselage and boom. To create the kits cost around $310. I don't know how long the build took. I bought one of the kits, took a look at the build, and sold the kit to another club member. I bought an AVA. I am not a builder, and that build would have been way over my head. For me the cost of the ARF was cheap compared to the time investment to build. Denny, at www.polecataero.com was selling an EZBD kit for a while for $340. Based on the work my club members did to create those kits, Denny's kit seems very reasonable in price. And he claims it is a faster build. Based on the quality of his other planes, I would trust a kit from Polecat. Now, if someone likes the AVA and wants to build it for themselves, then build the Bubble Dancer. Based on what I have seen at the field, the Bubble Dancer is just as much of a super ship as the ARFs that copy it. And, it is a real "builder's" plane. But it takes a lot of work time to build. If building is your pleasure, it is time is well spent. However if you look at it as time equals money or building time subtracts from other activities, then you are doing a make/buy economic decision. If you take the time to build a Bubble Dancer into account, I agree, the AVA, the Topaz, the Soprano and similar ships are a real good value. Unless you love to build, there is little economic justification to building the kit over the available high quality ARFs. If you love to build, then the hours spent building are a joy in itself and the money saved is of no importance and an AVA offers little value to someone who loves to build. Ed Anderson > Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:17:05 -0400 > From: Lincoln Ross <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: Soaring@airage.com > Subject: re: RES vs UNL vs DLG > Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > First off, let's put my alleged divinity aside for the duration of this > post. > > People whine too loudly about the super ships in RES. I've beaten some > of them with 25 year old pieces of crap. On a good day it doesn't matter > that much. Unless you get extra bonus points for landing a pretty ship, > you can get the same 100 landing points with an old trainer. I'll admit > that on tough days having an Ava improves your chances. However, the Ava > is quite a deal. $700 or so. A top of the line unlimited like the Supra > is going to run you somewhere between almost twice to almost three times > that. If you insist on someone else building the glider, an Ava or > similar is quite a deal. I figure it would take me more than 100 hours > to build something like that, and it wouldn't be as nice. Would take > less time to get a second job flipping burgers and buy the Ava.. > > If you want to build gliders yourself, well then things are still cheap, > but there are so few people who want to do that that kits are hard to > find. Remember that these dollars are worth a lot less than the ones we > had in the '80s, when as I recall people would spend what I recall as > the better part of $300 on a Windsong kit and spend 100 hours BUILDING > it. I spent maybe 60 hours building a Cumic back in 1990, and it turned > out to be a real dog. Not like the Sagitta wings I'd build before. > > Actually, I do want to do a little building, but it doesn't make > economic sense when I'm working full time. > > Possibly kits will make a comeback when wages in the rest of the world > get close to what they are in the USA. (That's a good thing, by the way, > except maybe for the environment.) > > BTW, although I've flown 2M a LOT, I think 100 inches would have been > the better limited size. > RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
