similar design

[Rcmaster199 at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/14/2002 10:36:51 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
tony at radiosouthrc.com writes:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Nik Middleton" <middletn at spinmail.com>
> To: <discussion at nsrca.org>
> Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 9:30 AM
> Subject: RE: similar design
> 
> 
> >Interesting list,  one thing stands out though,  there don't seem to be
> that
> >many new US designs these days.  Not trying to be contentious here, merely
> >making an observation.  At this year's Euro champs, I didn't see one US
> >designed plane out of 150 aircraft,  yes I know it's Europe, but you would
> >have thought there'd be one or two.
> >
> >I'm aware that the Focus is a great flying plane, functional etc, but no
> one
> >could say it was stylish.  Where have all the good looking US designs
> gone?
> >I'm not saying there aren't any out there, but how many new for this year?
> >There seems to be a tremendous growth in the manufacture and design in
> >Europe, PL and ZN seem to be releasing at least two new designs every
> year,
> >and they're been sold as quickly as they're been made.
> >
> >Comments?

NIK,

Iam sure you know this: it's hard to turn a buck, designing and kitting 
Pattern models in US. Then selling them to us, a fairly fickle crowd of maybe 
a couple thousand customers at best. Do the math and you will find that even 
for a stellar product, the earnings would be what, 50K$ maybe? It's tough to 
make ends meet with that, so these are more labors of love.

I think that Europe has an advantage in that their profit expectations are 
far more modest than here. The other thing we also don't know is the European 
kit makers' affiliations with other ventures. It would not surprise me if at 
least one of the kit makers was primarily doing work for his country's 
government first, and doing the model kitting in spare
 time.

Here, government work of an independent nature is so lucrative, that one 
would never waste his time making model planes for peanuts. He or she could 
be earning big bucks on a government contract, creating molds and casting 
composite parts for some gizmo too small to bother the big government labs 
with. 

One man's opinion

Matt Kebabjian
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