Does anyone have a figure for how many RV’s have been sold and how many are actually flying?
That’s impressive in today’s GA world.
T28 wrote:
I think the “homemade RV4” versus Blackwing comparison is irrelevant. People who spend 150k on a Blackwing either don’t have enough spare time to spend 10 years on building something in a garage, or value it at a lot more than 150k.
You can buy a nice RV 4 for about $45K. A friend who is an ex Top Gun instructor and current small manufacturing company president just sold his for that amount and replaced it with an RV 6 because his wife prefers side by side seating. It was beautiful but did have 1500 hrs SMOH.
The RVs give him something to fly, which he does a lot, but he built neither of them. He spends most of his ‘airplane money and time’ on an SNJ restoration that he’s been doing for some years to show winning standard. It looks ready to fly now but is probably more than a year from flying – the devil is in the details.
Given those aircraft and activities, he wouldn’t be a customer for a Blackwing etc and money wouldn’t be the issue, value and capability would be the issues if such a comparison were ever to occur to him.
Could it not be argued that a Blackwing is really a high perf hard-runway distance-flying machine, which runs counter to the “UL spirit” which is to do short hops between “zero cost” grass strips, while the pretty limited comfort (which is inherent in all “UL class” machines) makes long range touring an unattractive proposition?
All this taken together limits the market to people who want to look like they do all these things, are willing to pay 150-200k for the ability to show everyone they can do it, but have to accept that they actually aren’t able to?
There is a market for almost everything, but the numbers will depend on how much overlap can be achieved with real-world customer desires. It’s a bit like building a TB20 which needs 2km of runway. You would sell some (probably mostly in the US) but not many.
I know most of the marketing material pictures them sitting on grass, but in reality this nose gear
isn’t going to withstand much more than a small rabbit hole…
Peter wrote:
An IO540-C4 is ~65k $ retail and I reckon 30k$ OEM and the 50k avionics (which cost next to nothing to make) are likely to be perhaps 20k OEM. A GNS430W costs only about $300 in parts. Similar ratios for a Rotax.In general, a manufacturer needs to get the material cost below 50% of the selling price (and I mean the selling price to their dealers, which on normal SEPs is some 15% below the retail list price). That is a rough rule for a business which is actually making something real but not in big volumes and not really cheap (what I’ve been doing since 1978). In aircraft you have quite a lot of labour (low volume, etc, meaning few options for tooling-up) so one can bend that a bit but to sell a plane retail for 150k you need to get the materials down to 60k.
Peter, I think that the prices you mention look realistic IF we are talking about some volume discounts, and until you start selling I’m not sure you are going to get much of discount. Hence the my remark about the numbers sold.
An avionics manufacturer must have a basic OEM price list. That is just how all business is done. When you start manufacturing, you have to decide the reseller structure, and the pricing structure which will be offered. Even if you set off selling direct to end users (which is obviously virtually impossible in the certified business) you will eventually be approached by resellers and you will have to run with them to make progress beyond a certain point.
They are absolutely not selling to an airframe maker at the retail list price.
For example an avionics installer (who doesn’t make planes) gets about a 25% discount, so gets a 10k end user box for 7.5k. So they make 2.5k just by ordering it. This is pretty well known in the business, although no currently active avionics shop will say it openly. There is no doubt some small variation around that figure.
An OEM price for the said box, even for 1-off, will be less. I would guess 5k. For 1000-off it will be negotiated, but nobody in GA will be ordering 1000 in one firm order (i.e. with specified delivery dates); not even Cirrus who have sold ~10k planes over ~20 years, with a broad mix of avionics over the years. For example Socata would have been ordering US avionics and engines in batches of a few dozen.
Part of the answer is that a whole lot more RVs have been built by individual in their garages, than Blackwings being sold. About a factor 1000.
That comparison can’t be made because
I think the sales of the 150k+ ULs are low because of the other options, and probably with market saturation being a big factor.
Look at why go for a UL.
I think the #1 reason is the community, so eloquently described by Aart.
The #2 reason will be cheaper flying than certified stuff (for various reasons, starting with DIY maintenance i.e. avoiding the margins of a company, and a little plane burns little fuel), but that isn’t the case if you splash out 150k+ up front (that’s more than a lifetime of fuel for the vast majority).
A significant reason will be the easier medical. In the UK, some 4k pilots are currently flying without a medical, using the PMD, with most of them being CofA planes. I don’t know about other countries (France has no medical for UL) but clearly there are medical concessions. And I do know, from cases I know about, that a long-term pilot who has lost his ICAO medical is likely to pay almost any money to keep flying, even if limited nationally and VFR-only (this actually drives a lot of ready built RV sales here in the UK).
I think that by the time somebody reaches the stage of paying 150k+, they are not as dumb as I was when I was starting my PPL. They probably know what I knew when looking to buy my own plane, which wasn’t much, but one learns fast. And knowledge is not what you want in your customers in this case 
Peter wrote:
That comparison can’t be made
I think a companion of LSA versus RV-EAB sport planes is a valid comparison, assuming the buyer isn’t a poncy dilettante who is only interested in buying from a showroom or whatever, and assuming performance and function have as much value, or more. And also assuming the owner can obtain whatever medical certificate may be required to fly either.
Many of the 550 RVs that were first flown in the last year will eventually be sold, as will some of the 550 first flown the year before, the 550 first flown the year before that, and so on. In due course some of the 550 that will be first flown in next 365 days will be on the market, and some of those are being completed in Europe as shown on Vans website. Two recently in CH I noticed.
In other words you don’t have to build one to own one, if you don’t want to build one 
Finding one already completed is not too challenging given the numbers, and the RV community is incredibly active and strong. The latter is something which in all honesty doesn’t appeal to me much, I enjoy less charted waters, but to many people it’s a huge attraction.
Peter wrote:
Look at why go for a UL.
The history here is important. The concept of UL isn’t old. In the 1970-80 when UL started, it was all about the ability to fly in super simple contraptions. No bureaucracy, no regulations. It was a kind of back to the very basics of powered flight. Building a super simple aircraft in the garage using readily available materials and tools, then go to a field and try it. Others mounted engines on their hang gliders, that also worked. Then what happened was that within the basic frame of max MTOW 450 kg and min stall speed, people realized that it was possible to make real aircraft. Very soon, due to the “no regulation” part, a whole new industry started. Today we have these hi tech carbon aircraft capable of cruising at 150+ kts.
For most people today, UL is a simpler, cheaper way to fly VFR the way most people fly VFR. They fly alone, or with one passenger, and they fly short-ish trips, 1-2 hours away. Fly to fly ins and so on. The average UL can fly for 5+ hours without refueling, and will to this at the same speed or faster than a C-172. I’t an alternative to the basic certified VFR SEP, only cheaper, simpler, less bureaucracy. At least 95% of all the private recreational flying done today can be done with a UL.
The problem today is the price of new ULs. There is nothing simple and cheap about paying 150k for an aircraft, no matter what kind of aircraft. Another problem is the urge of the UL community to become “respectable”. With “respectable” I mean to become a true alternative to certified aircraft. 600 kg MTOW is a part of this urge. The acceptance of insanely expensive planes as a part of the evolution is part of this urge. The “logic” of UL is lost when you can get a PPL, include an IFR rating and get a touring aircraft for less than the cost of a new UL. The logic is lost for those without 150k to simply throw around at the first and best. Yet, irrelevant for those with lots of money of course. It becomes a rich man’s game, the complete opposite of what it started out as.
Peter wrote:
A significant reason will be the easier medical
That’s not my experience. A LAPL makes the medical easy enough, and it’s bi-annual. If you cannot pass that, you shouldn’t fly (or drive a car for that matter )
