HAL Pilot
Well Known Member
So I have been pondering the limitations and business model that Vans has.
Designing an airplane is an expensive proposition especially when tech support is included from the vendor for all past models. Vans main bread and butter is the selling of the components for their kits. The engineering part is a necessary business cost. They have limited ability to engineer new things if they are working service bulletins, researching tech support issues or even creating a construction Wiki like I suggested a few years ago etc. With the current Covid fun we have all been going through there will be a major push for work at home solutions for businesses, so having a distributed volunteer workforce is not out of the realm of possibilities.
3D printed parts could eventually be included to reduce construction time and cost.
There are 30k some members of VAF some with advanced degrees that could be useful. If we created a volunteer .Org service that engineered an aircraft for Vans, it would be much easier for Vans to create and test the hardware that eventually is sold to us. This same organization could have a living construction plans document with tech support residing on the document for all to see issues and fixes as they come up. Kind of like what VAF is right now. The result would free up the engineers at Vans to do higher level design management of such external and inhouse projects resulting in better construction plans for us and even more aircraft options to chose from. Theoretically DR could run the Internet part of such an organization as more airplane options would create more users, more advertisers, and more donors. So everyone benefits.
As a volunteer maybe one could earn credit for discounts depending on how much time you donate. This credit could be used to buy stuff from Vans, or sold to active Kit buyers.
I'm sure there's a can of worms worth of legal issues for something like this but I would guess there might be some legal eagles here that could help.
If you are interested in what the RV14 Wiki looks like there's a link in my signature.
Thoughts?
Designing an airplane is an expensive proposition especially when tech support is included from the vendor for all past models. Vans main bread and butter is the selling of the components for their kits. The engineering part is a necessary business cost. They have limited ability to engineer new things if they are working service bulletins, researching tech support issues or even creating a construction Wiki like I suggested a few years ago etc. With the current Covid fun we have all been going through there will be a major push for work at home solutions for businesses, so having a distributed volunteer workforce is not out of the realm of possibilities.
3D printed parts could eventually be included to reduce construction time and cost.
There are 30k some members of VAF some with advanced degrees that could be useful. If we created a volunteer .Org service that engineered an aircraft for Vans, it would be much easier for Vans to create and test the hardware that eventually is sold to us. This same organization could have a living construction plans document with tech support residing on the document for all to see issues and fixes as they come up. Kind of like what VAF is right now. The result would free up the engineers at Vans to do higher level design management of such external and inhouse projects resulting in better construction plans for us and even more aircraft options to chose from. Theoretically DR could run the Internet part of such an organization as more airplane options would create more users, more advertisers, and more donors. So everyone benefits.
As a volunteer maybe one could earn credit for discounts depending on how much time you donate. This credit could be used to buy stuff from Vans, or sold to active Kit buyers.
I'm sure there's a can of worms worth of legal issues for something like this but I would guess there might be some legal eagles here that could help.
If you are interested in what the RV14 Wiki looks like there's a link in my signature.
Thoughts?