I agree, and that’s why I wrote “(materials, direct labour, profit)”. On a factory build you are paying out all the extras. Almost the same scenario as when using a maintenance company, compared to a freelance mechanic.
However, a factory (or a “serial builder”) can build the thing in a fraction of the time that you can.
Most people build planes for fun, not to save money or time, and when they’re done they can have a plane that performs better than what they can buy from a factory.
The guy adjacent to me built his RV-6 about fifteen years ago and flew it extensively. Then he got bored and built an RV-3, which unlike the more recent versions doesn’t have matched hole skins etc and takes longer to build. He now spends much of his spare time modifying and improving both of them, as well as flying them. The RV-3 is better to fly if he has no passenger – it climbs at some incredible rate like 3000 fpm on 150 HP, among other attributes, but he designed and installed a new panel for the RV-6 recently, and flew it to Oshkosh this year where he worked the antique & classic area (also unpaid, he’s got enough money). None of this activity is compared (by anybody) to buying a time-conserving Mooney or whatever like other guys down the row, because by comparison that’s not so much fun.
In relation to the topic, this kind of activity fuels enthusiasm and participation in GA. It’s what some people want to do, as a goal, and many of that group would not continue involvement in aviation if it was limited to buying and flying a factory built plane.
MedEwok wrote:
I very much agree with Peter regarding homebuilt aircraft. You don’t get anything for free, instead you pay with your own lifetime
I have not yet met any builder who see it that way, and I have met many. But I guess in some circumstances building your own plane is the only way to get your own plane. Then this is what you have to do. In general though, either you like building aircraft, or you don’t. This is exactly like anything else you would do in your spare time, like growing tomatoes, playing guitar, being active in sports and so on.
Silvaire wrote:
I’m sure somebody, somewhere runs earnest calculations on whether the value of time required to meet and date a spouse prior to marriage is inefficient when compared to going to Vegas once a month for 30 years
Exactly.
I agree with @Silvaire
I’m not building an RV to save money, I’m building an RV because I really enjoy building it and it’s the aeroplane I want. I’m not counting the hours it takes, nor attaching cost to them in any sort of accountancy sense. It’s my free time and I do what I want with it.
Being salaried, any accountancy-style assessment of the time I spend on it is largely meaningless because I don’t have the option to work more and make more money with that time. Or I could work more during those hours, but I wouldn’t get paid more.
In 1986 I had a burning desire to own my airplane… thing is I was pretty young (in age ), PPL, married to a no income gal, and not earning heaps.
Add to that the lack of lustre, looks, and performance inherent to the vast majority of spam cans, and my immediate falling in love with the F8L Falco…
I therefore decided to build an RV-4
Having spoken to a couple of Falco builders, received the info package (which you had to pay for…), added up the price of all the necessary kits and realized the very long build time required for the other “wooden wonder” made me steer towards Van’s offering.
For the RV-4, initial building time sales estimates were 1’500h (which got increased by the company over the years…). I paid $6.6K for the kit with most options, such as rear seat rudder pedals, etc.
Over the next 12 (twelve) years I spent 3’6K hours building, airframe complete, initial wiring and engine installation done, moved 3 times, and changed wife once. Did I like the building? No. Having to force myself in a cold workshop whilst still jet-lagged from work, then spend the day resolving problems and trying to feed my insatiable appetite for perfection sure was no fun…
I then had had enough of building, sold the nearing completion (90% done, 90 to go) RV… and bought a Falco 🤣
Then another Falco… and then an RV, plus a couple of other weird types in between.
Notwithstanding the personal story above, airplane homebuilding has changed a lot.
Vague “figure it out yourself good luck” instructions, error ridden plans, parts maybe fitting together but mostly not, have given way to IKEA type step by step take you by the hand construction manuals, pre punched or even quick built kits, in which the basic structure is already built, leaving the assembler to perform the systems installation. As securing that acres of glass panel just received from Steinair, installing some antennas, secure the engine and prop, go fly and enjoy yourself 👍🏻
Yes, there are “repeat offenders”… people that like to work with their hands, loving all the challenges of bringing a so called kit to a flying machine. Not sure what the record is, but I know one guy that has built 15 aircraft…
As for myself, same as in RC, I have realized being more of the pilot type than the builder type…
I have never considered building an aircraft, but I regard aircraft maintenance work as a chore, like gardening.
Some guys enjoy gardening, and some guys enjoy engineering work, which gives them as much pleasure as flying. Often they have an engineering background.
MedEwok wrote:
I very much agree with Peter regarding homebuilt aircraft. You don’t get anything for free, instead you pay with your own lifetime.
You get something for free more or less since there is one thing you don’t have to pay: taxes. Let’s say you want to dig a hole in your garden, then you can either spend 1 hour digging or you pay a landscaper to dig for 1 hour. He wants 40€ for that, including value added tax on the labour and his income tax. You may make 40€/h but after taxes and health insurance there will be only 20 left. In the end you will have to work twice as much than digging yourself. Back pain aside, from the purely economical perspective in this case DIY makes sense as long as the contractor is not significantly more skilled and thus faster. Only in our society people tend to work more than they need to and end up with more money than time.
LeSving wrote:
Money vise, owning has to be cheaper than renting, if you fly more than a certain hours per year.
Generally, it is said that the limit to where a plane (any plane) becomes cheaper to own than to rent in terms of operating cost and with similar cost structure is around 100.
The way this works is that fixed costs are pretty much the same if a plane flies or not, the variable costs are hour dependent, such as fuel, maintenance (which is part fixed part variable) and so on.
Without going into too much detail, this is what I have seen confirmed over and over doing those calcs with potential buyers.
(A soft number may also be 60 hours, as this is what you generally can fly per year without the need of a 50 hours check. Still, 100 (or 110) will distribute the fixed costs over a larger number of hours, consequently bringing down the price per hour.
