185 vs. Bearhawk

[DemoDollCate]

Consumables, I would not have given them a thought. Loved reading your breakdown of it Glenn.

[Glenn Patterson]

Thank you. It is experience from a different perspective. Normally consumables are not on a person’s radar but it is a lot of small spending that quietly rolls up into a good number. Another factor common to budget estimating is a 10% for contingency and higher if there is serious risk. My partner was frustrated when I started to talk about consumables and after awhile he just surrendered. We laugh about it now.

We found over a life time of project experience that most of the 10% contingency is spent and the project usually squeaks in just under budget. The accountants took contingencies away so we bloated all the costs 10% in self defense. Eventually the bean counters figured it out and allowed contingency to return to the budget.

This is how people get stung on home renovations as they only see the big numbers and have no awareness to budget for contingencies or for other costs that sneak in. It comes as a shock when the money runs out. I designed an expansion and a make over of a friends house. He was upset and angry with me when I told him it would be cheaper to take a backhoe to his old house and start fresh. I told him to add in about 15% for contingencies as it was an old house and god knows what they may find when the opened it up. He listened to me and secured the loan approval at the higher numbers. We were talking later and he told me it would have been easier if he had knocked it down. There was a lot of work stripping and renewing an old structure so the labour is almost double. His contingencies went to repairing dry rot and upgrading the old structures where it was inadequate.

The best thing for a scratch builder is to claw costs back where possible. We combined the aluminum order with a fellow builder and got a 10% discount for volume. Credit cards clip the vendors and it is factored into the costs. I ask if I can get a discount for cash. Most will give 5% without a second thought. I secured large orders with my MasterCard so they can assemble the order and the vendor released it when the cheque arrived. We had all the aluminum for the entire project in one purchase except we had to buy a part sheet to finish the wing and stabilizer fairings. We saved $660 with seeking quotes and negotiating for cash. I went out for quotes to several vendors then negotiated with the lowest bidder. The lower vendor had knocked 10% off for the volume and I asked for the discount for cash. It does not matter to the vendor if I get the discount for cash or he gets clipped by the credit card company as credit cards are factored into everyone's pricing. It is better to give the customer the break for cash as he will be back. We bundled all the steel into one order and went to the market. The steel vendor gave us a 10% discount for volume and I asked if we could have a discount for cash so they offered 10%. The savings on the steel was around $600. We did the same with ordering all the hardware in one bundle to save about $500 over the catalog prices. The piece mealing of materials over time is a budget killer and pay as one plays is expensive. Better to negotiate the best deals on volume and use PLC if it takes a few months to pay off. We bought the aluminum out of pocket and set an amount aside each month to build a fund and the money was there when we had to buy the steel. When the fuselage was done the money was there. If a person bought a plane they would have monthly payments so the same mentality needs to apply to building. Take the project & use the best business sense possible.

Building an airplane is a multi year project and builders should have some factors estimated in.

Glenn

[JimParker256]

I found it even "cheaper" to let Mark Goldberg and AviPro do all that purchase negotiating for me, including negotiating the skilled labor to weld up the fuselage and build up the major portion of the wings... My time may not be worth much there days (retired), but avoiding aggravation and frustration is priceless... And I hope to eventually see my airplane fly - which I'm not sure would have happened if I tried to scratch build... LOL

[Glenn Patterson]

I agree. I think by the time a person factored in all their costs honestly that the cost saved by putting the labour into a scratch is small. The years of labour to get the scratch built to the level of the kit likely leads to burnout. If a person expends the same energy of scratch building to get the construction to the state of a kit to completing a kit they will be done years sooner and less likely to burn out. It is idealistic thinking that if a person does all the work themselves that they will have an inexpensive airplane. It takes the same qty of materials, consumables, instrumentation, power plants etc for a flying aircraft built from scratch or a kit. The only savings a scratch builder can put into the equation is labour. All the costs to support the labour of scratch building with tools, equipment, consumables, shop operating costs etc cuts the savings to a point that is very low. A person would not work for an employer at that rate retired or not. Burn out is serious risk and may be why there are so many homebuilts of every variety for sale in various stages of completion. The partners in our scratch build made the commitment to complete the build and we held one another to that commitment. We are at the point where it is ready to fly and want the construction out of our lives.

Realistically a person could get a second job at a higher rate than the hourly rate than their scratch built labour equates to in order to pay for the kit and be better off. The savings in life hours could justify the second job.
Glenn