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| S-19 Progress Report 3-11-08 | |||
| DELIVERY | |||
| Assembly of 5 more S-19LS sport planes has begun, and strategic changes to increase production to meet the rising demand are in place. These consist of acquiring a third CNC router table, and speeding up the press to double time speeds. The build up is starting to pay off with increasing reduction in lead times for tail kits, and now we are weeks away from shipping fuselage kits. We ask for patience, again this project has had that strange combination of steep learning curves and mega amounts of orders. This is a good problem, but does cause for many depositors to become impatient. As accurately as we try to make delivery dates, there has been less then accurate results. With 25 years of success pushing us forward; we are full steam ahead. The unwillingness to compromise quality, and the need to validate both the kit parts and tech manual dictates the delivery speed. One point of consolation to our early depositors is the price for the goods is quite fair, and the value of your plane is going up. | |||
| INTERIOR | |||
| The S-19LS continues to build time, doing demos, and continued service testing. The interior work fine, but will be fine tuned, with a possible change to the style. The flight to Sebring was a good chance to feel the effects of the new interior, and how well it holds up with many entry and exits by a variety of people. There was no issue with the interiors basic design, and with some small changes in tooling we should be ready to go well ahead of the first builder wanting this option. A price for this will be announced once the kit is in final form. | |||
| PRESS | |||
| The S-19 is enjoying lots of press through printed and Internet sources. You can read about the S-19 in Kitplanes issue__April 2008 http://www.kitplanes.com/ and see interviews at Aero-news network. http://mefeedia.com/query.php?q=RANS%20S-19%20Aeronews | |||
| ENGINE COST | |||
Before we all get to excited about the climbing engine prices let’s take serious stock in what is offered. The choices are few and far between, at least choices that will actually perform as well, last as long, and be light enough to result in a decent payload. I for one am not happy to pay $170 to $200 per horsepower, but is there really any options that can top the Rotax 912ULS? If you go to the 0-200, or 0-235 you lose at least a 100 pounds of payload, decrease your range, increase you cost of operation per hour, and increase noise and vibration levels, all for the chance at saving a few bucks. And that is in doubt because a new 0-200 will be around $170 plus per horsepower, as well as most other aircraft engines.The Jabiru may hold promise but there are fundamental problems with this engine, availability, indeterminate TBO, and the company making the engine refuseing to expand the production. Since they also build an airframe, you know the first order of business is to take care of the engine demand for their fleet of planes. Every dollar I spend on their engine goes to help fund a competing airframe builder.The bottom line is aircraft engines will always cost too much, as will airplanes, and until flying becomes a larger percentage of average consumers pastime, that will remain the way it is. You could make the argument that if planes were cheaper, and it would have to be drastic, more people would take up flying as a hobby. There still remains one significant problem: professional training is required. This requires time and money, not to mention, not everyone makes the grade. Private aviation has benefited from sport planes, and the SLSA movement in the fact that products are refined, perform well, and on par with many GA aircraft in terms of actual practical use. And comparing the cost to other options in ready to fly planes, they are less costly. Kit planes however still rule in the most bang for the buck, even with the high price of engines, and this will possibly remain true as long as planes are largely a hand assembled product. |
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| Randy Schlitter CEO RANS Designs Inc. |
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