Steve & Eileen Genotte wrote:
>
> Mark Talbot wrote:
>
> > >with this fast built kit you could built your Europa XS in between 600 and
> > >1000 hours.
> > >
> > But I thought that the original build kit was meant to take only 500 hours
> > to complete. Surely that is what the advertisements always said - look at
> > them - YEARS of them, in LOTS of magazines. Yet here is a FAST build kit
> > that is going to take longer - or maybe 500 hours longer!! Something is
> > wrong, surely?? Can someone explain?
>
> Mark,
>
> The first rule in kit planes is to double the original build time estimate of
> the manufacturer. I'm not saying there is some dark purpose to this
> underestimation of actual build time, that's just the way it seems to work
> out. Over the years it has been shown that the average Europa (pre XS models)
> was taking approx. 1000 or so hours to finish, thereby proving my above
> statement. Since the XS kit greatly reduces the amount of lay ups/finishing
> required, the projected time savings has a great deal of validity behind it.
> There is "...nothing wrong...", its just part of the evolution of a design and
> its build process.
>
> Regards
>
> Steve Genotte
>
Also to be kept in mind is the statement, in most of the magazine
articles, that they were using manufacturing facilities. Thus had the
best of all situations in which to work. Not like the homebuilder with
limited space and, unless filthy rich, not the means to keep all
materials on hand to be available when needed in the construction
process.
|