It was the new un-assembled seat kit manufactured by VANS.
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RV-10 Front Seats
- Thread starter Carl Froehlich
- Start date
It was the new un-assembled seat kit manufactured by VANS.
Why is it so hard for them to deliver in a sensical order?
psvalentine
Active Member
I found out yesterday it will be 5-6 months till we receive our seats. We are more than 100 down the list. Production is 20-30 a month. We are so bummed. We have had our finish kit for a year now and the plane is completely done ready to fly. Well, except for the engine. Just a small matter. Ha.
I suppose the only way to fairly deliver the seats is by order date. But there are those of us out here that have finished and are ready. And others who are no where near ready.
I suppose the only way to fairly deliver the seats is by order date. But there are those of us out here that have finished and are ready. And others who are no where near ready.
Bill Boyd
Well Known Member
Just like calculating the "shortest route to land at all airports in side X geographic area," figuring out the most completion-time efficient way to allocate available RV-10 seats while minimizing unfairness based on position in the order queue would be a great thing to have A. I. working on.
A lot more beneficial to mankind than most of what it's been used for so far
A lot more beneficial to mankind than most of what it's been used for so far
I emailed an inquiry of my seat status last Thursday. Had a tracking number 2 1/2 hours later and the box was delivered to my door today. Haven't opened it, yet, but I've little doubt that they're the Van's version. Size and density of the box tells me they are unassembled seats. (Box seems rather heavy for just two front seats sans upholstery.)
P.S. Finish kit ordered 7/2021
P.S. Finish kit ordered 7/2021
Ordered my Finishing Kit 8/5/2021 (picked up everything minus seats on 6/21/2023) and the seats arrived yesterday 4/16/2024. The seats are unassembled and accompany a revised section 49 for seat assembly. Box weighed 46lbs. The quality appears to be pretty good (perceived quality?).
I spoke with a representative of Van's on Friday, May 10, looking for information on when my front seats might ship. I was told that there was a "recall" on the seats that had been delivered, and that they had no information on when more seats might be available.
My finish kit had two backordered items; the seats, and a hardware bag. They offered to ship the hardware bag.
Has anyone else heard this?
My finish kit had two backordered items; the seats, and a hardware bag. They offered to ship the hardware bag.
Has anyone else heard this?
Just great. After a three year wait my engine is ready for pickup. Now I get another stop on the seats.
Carl
Recieved a notice from Van's today: "After shipping the initial production run to customers, we received valuable feedback and revised the foam contouring and seat back profile. This redesign is not related to functionality; it is being made for aesthetics, comfort, and ease of upholstery."
I was hoping Van's had merely reverse engineered the Oregon Aero seats (that I paid for.) Does not appear to be the case. I do appreciate that they're trying to make things right, but to survive they best get their quality under control.
I was hoping Van's had merely reverse engineered the Oregon Aero seats (that I paid for.) Does not appear to be the case. I do appreciate that they're trying to make things right, but to survive they best get their quality under control.
Did you receive your seats, or are they still backordered? I've received no such notice.
Received them 1 month ago.
This is the response to my email last week asking for an update.
Carl
Hello,
Your are number 47 in line.
We don’t have an exact date for this part.
We will let you know as soon as possible.
My apologies for the inconvenience.
Have a good day!
Are you waiting on the seats or just the seat backs? I already have the seats and have assembled them other than the back pans. I had some fitment issues with the back pans and the back frames and I'm really curious if the revision fixes the issue.
No seat backs (or correspondence) here.
They won’t - they were built by Oregon Aero…
The thread has gotten pretty quiet. Anyone with an update on the front seats. I did get the "hardware" AN bolts I've been waiting on and the last item missing from the finish kit is the seats. I haven't touched the build much over the last few months. Without a seat resolution fairly soon I may have to abandon the build.
Indycanard
Member
I saw this on a local FB post:
RV-10 Seats
This is an open letter from me, Mike Dennis, CEO, President, and founder of Oregon Aero, Inc. I'm concerned about what I'm hearing about delays in building RV-10s due to the lack of pilot seats. Oregon Aero, Inc. is a major seat supplier, and we annually ship approximately 16,000 seat cushions for all types of military and civilian aircraft including cushion kits for ejection seats, and crashworthy seat frames for some bespoke aircraft.
We’ve supplied pilot seats for the RV-10 since the aircraft was first designed to fit around a pair of them. The apparent seat supply dilemma has been characterized as a supply chain failure. As a matter of fact, we received our last order from Van’s on 1/26/2023, after which Van’s called us on 7/6/2023 to inform us that they were going to design and build their own seats. We’ve received no RV-10 seat orders from Van’s since the last order for 30 ship sets on 1/26/2023. In fact, there were still supply chain issues at that time, and those 30 ship sets took longer to deliver than we would have liked.
I’m writing this letter due to my concern that the seats that have recently been supplied for the RV-10 may not achieve the crashworthy performance and comfort standards of the Oregon Aero supplied seat.
The seat that we’ve designed for the RV-10 is a version of our modular High-G crashworthy certified seat complete with all the same comfort and safety features as tested in a certified laboratory. 2,800 hours over the course of a decade in the crash lab resulted in what is still the only certified lightweight non-stroking crashworthy seat. Every piece of the overall structure is patented, including slides, locks, extrusions, and seat pan, and all are necessary to achieve both comfort and safety.
The human form is not flat, but a combination of inverse compound curves that must be maintained by the cushion and the upholstery to provide comfort and safety. The materials selected for the cushions and their inverse compound shape are necessary to keep you first comfortable, and in any sort of high-energy event, instantly transform their molecular structure into one that will enhance your survivability.
Sorry for the lecture, I can’t help myself.
We’ve no control over the cost of materials. For obvious reasons of efficiency, our normal process is to manufacture cushions and seat frames in bulk. However, for the RV-10 community, we’re willing to take orders for a single ship set. To advantage the builder, we will include two seat frames, four seat rails, and two bottom and back seat cushions, upholstered in either standard aircraft quality woven Mordura nylon fabric or leather, assembled, and ready to install.
This package establishes a cost for the seats that's known, but also avoids the possibility of an unknown local upholsterer with no background in crashworthy seats who may butcher the cushion design in an effort to facilitate his or her work.
The retail price of this package with standard fabric upholstery is $18,913.00 for a complete ship set. There is nothing left to assemble or buy. Alternatively, the seat cushions can be supplied with certified, aircraft quality leather for an additional $1,000 or whatever the current market rate for leather happens to be.
As an incentive intended, obviously, to expand production to something beyond one ship set, we will offer the RV-10 community a 10% discount off these prices.
We will get you flying.
Mike Dennis
CEO, President, and Founder, Oregon Aero, Inc.
RV-10 Seats
This is an open letter from me, Mike Dennis, CEO, President, and founder of Oregon Aero, Inc. I'm concerned about what I'm hearing about delays in building RV-10s due to the lack of pilot seats. Oregon Aero, Inc. is a major seat supplier, and we annually ship approximately 16,000 seat cushions for all types of military and civilian aircraft including cushion kits for ejection seats, and crashworthy seat frames for some bespoke aircraft.
We’ve supplied pilot seats for the RV-10 since the aircraft was first designed to fit around a pair of them. The apparent seat supply dilemma has been characterized as a supply chain failure. As a matter of fact, we received our last order from Van’s on 1/26/2023, after which Van’s called us on 7/6/2023 to inform us that they were going to design and build their own seats. We’ve received no RV-10 seat orders from Van’s since the last order for 30 ship sets on 1/26/2023. In fact, there were still supply chain issues at that time, and those 30 ship sets took longer to deliver than we would have liked.
I’m writing this letter due to my concern that the seats that have recently been supplied for the RV-10 may not achieve the crashworthy performance and comfort standards of the Oregon Aero supplied seat.
The seat that we’ve designed for the RV-10 is a version of our modular High-G crashworthy certified seat complete with all the same comfort and safety features as tested in a certified laboratory. 2,800 hours over the course of a decade in the crash lab resulted in what is still the only certified lightweight non-stroking crashworthy seat. Every piece of the overall structure is patented, including slides, locks, extrusions, and seat pan, and all are necessary to achieve both comfort and safety.
The human form is not flat, but a combination of inverse compound curves that must be maintained by the cushion and the upholstery to provide comfort and safety. The materials selected for the cushions and their inverse compound shape are necessary to keep you first comfortable, and in any sort of high-energy event, instantly transform their molecular structure into one that will enhance your survivability.
Sorry for the lecture, I can’t help myself.
We’ve no control over the cost of materials. For obvious reasons of efficiency, our normal process is to manufacture cushions and seat frames in bulk. However, for the RV-10 community, we’re willing to take orders for a single ship set. To advantage the builder, we will include two seat frames, four seat rails, and two bottom and back seat cushions, upholstered in either standard aircraft quality woven Mordura nylon fabric or leather, assembled, and ready to install.
This package establishes a cost for the seats that's known, but also avoids the possibility of an unknown local upholsterer with no background in crashworthy seats who may butcher the cushion design in an effort to facilitate his or her work.
The retail price of this package with standard fabric upholstery is $18,913.00 for a complete ship set. There is nothing left to assemble or buy. Alternatively, the seat cushions can be supplied with certified, aircraft quality leather for an additional $1,000 or whatever the current market rate for leather happens to be.
As an incentive intended, obviously, to expand production to something beyond one ship set, we will offer the RV-10 community a 10% discount off these prices.
We will get you flying.
Mike Dennis
CEO, President, and Founder, Oregon Aero, Inc.
A lot to parse in that Oregon Aero post:
1. Is there a crash worthiness standard for seats in experimental aircraft in any way?
2. Wow on the pricing - the price for seats almost meets the cost of the finish kit as a whole. Guess that explains the disconnect on the seats.
1. Is there a crash worthiness standard for seats in experimental aircraft in any way?
2. Wow on the pricing - the price for seats almost meets the cost of the finish kit as a whole. Guess that explains the disconnect on the seats.
Something interesting about certification standards, testing, crashworthiness and potentially related to MOSAIC. Safety is obviously important to all of us, though modern methods of testing based in digital modeling and simulation has greatly improved safety and reduced costs significantly over the last couple of decades. We’re seeing cars, planes, and spacecraft all developed digitally, testing conducted through simulation, and end results who’s safety characteristics far outstrip traditional development (see spacex and Tesla…).
Getting away from the burdensome costs and time associated with traditional development and testing cycles will bring down industry costs. It seems that Vans even adopted some of this modern mindset in the development of the -14 from what I gather.
Many people may be familiar with a somewhat modern term, “getting Sherlocked.” In the early days of Mac OS X, a third party developer introduced a search tool called Sherlock. It was able to search my name, contents, location, etc. at the time it was somewhat revolutionary for its ease of use, interface design, and effectiveness at finding what a user needed without requiring to user to be a programmer themselves. It was so good, that Apple essentially copied their core functionality and integrated it at a system level within the operating system. No one was willing to pay for Sherlock when the same functionality was available to them as part of their OS. Many programs have been “Sherlocked” since…
While purely speculative, it seems that vans has decided that they could do better in-house for their seat production. I have no idea what sort of design, modeling, simulation, testing or any processes were involved in developing their seat kit. They certainly saw an area for cost improvement or this wouldn’t have likely been a decision they undertook. The seat production seems To have been caught up in the bankruptcy issues though we may have an end in sight finally on that bottleneck.
As far as Oregon aero offering their RV-10 seats, I always like having choices and options in the marketplace. I wish them success with their plans and while I haven’t been a customer of theirs, I believe them to be a top tier vendor.
My first RV-10 has these seats. Very good product, but the cost was ~10% of this listed $18,913. Shoot fire, the brand new Lycoming in my first RV cost less than this.
Perhaps I just don’t understand how aluminum and even the most space age super foam in the world, plus manufacturing could cost more than ~$2K for two relatively simple seats. What say you Oregon Aero - can you justify the cost (beyond your patent that locks in RV-10 builders)?
Considering the pain and cost to Van’s and its builders, is there any doubt why Van’s cut ties with Oregon Aero?
Carl
Waiting on seats for two years
The sales people at the booth did not the price, is 18K for front and back seats ?
Attachments
Carl, are you sure your seats were <$2k? I remember the BOM that came with my finish (?) kit and that the seats were incredibly expensive.
The invoice for my Finish Kit ordered in *edit* 2021 showed the backordered Oregon Aero seats priced at ~$7,150. The whole Finish kit was $17,450.
It took 2 years to recieve the Finish kit (sans seats) and another year to receive NON-Oregon Aero seats, which have since been recalled. So, essentially I am still waiting for seats. Paying another $18K to get what I should have received in the first place would be a tough pill to swallow.
It took 2 years to recieve the Finish kit (sans seats) and another year to receive NON-Oregon Aero seats, which have since been recalled. So, essentially I am still waiting for seats. Paying another $18K to get what I should have received in the first place would be a tough pill to swallow.
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Just the front pair.
I think you have a typo in the year. My finish kit, ordered in 2007, was $12.K, including the seats w/o upholstery.
I think people are mis-reading the tea leaves. Vans didn't recall their seats because of "defects". They recalled them under the threat of a patent infringement lawsuit. Greed - backed by patent lawyers - will be the undoing of free enterprise. I am sad to say, I don't think Vans is going to recover.
Yes, corrected to say 2021. I haven't waited 23 years for my seats, though it kinda feels like it.
What is your source for the patent infringement lawsuit? I would expect news like that to explode on this forum. If true, perhaps is why they haven't provided me the revised parts that they claimed would be sent out at the end of May.
Here is Van's explanation for the seat recall in an email:
"We are contacting you regarding the recent shipment of your RV-10 seats.
After shipping the initial production run to customers, we received valuable feedback and revised the foam contouring and seat back profile. This redesign is not related to functionality; it is being made for aesthetics, comfort, and ease of upholstery."
Oregon Aero or Vans?
I'm about to pay the final bill for finishing kit. Before i do, I think it's possible for me to delete the seat parts and buy the incredibly-expensive Oregon Aero seat parts instead. If you've read the (published here on VAF) open letter from Oregon Aero you might think that buying theirs would be a safer option. I emailed Vans to ask what the discount would be a few weeks ago and haven't heard back. I'd almost certainly be money ahead to blindly follow Vans lead. But currently undecided.
What does the VAF hive mind say?
I'm about to pay the final bill for finishing kit. Before i do, I think it's possible for me to delete the seat parts and buy the incredibly-expensive Oregon Aero seat parts instead. If you've read the (published here on VAF) open letter from Oregon Aero you might think that buying theirs would be a safer option. I emailed Vans to ask what the discount would be a few weeks ago and haven't heard back. I'd almost certainly be money ahead to blindly follow Vans lead. But currently undecided.
What does the VAF hive mind say?
Sounds like the revised seats are shipping.
I’m not sure what happened between Oregon aero and Vans or why these Oregon aero seats are so expensive. Must be made of rare earth metals or something.
I’ll happily wait for Vans to get them to me. They will.
In 2010 the seat foam, but not the covering (upholstry) was included in the kit.
I received my replacement back frames, back webs and cushions today. These are replacements for (because of the recall of) my original Van's seats I received in May.
A buddy has a pair of un-upholstered Oregon Aero seats that I look forward to comparing side-by-side when I assemble mine. Will report back.
A buddy has a pair of un-upholstered Oregon Aero seats that I look forward to comparing side-by-side when I assemble mine. Will report back.
Sounds like production is underway to hopefully get the caught up. My finish kit should be shipping soon without seats, but the inference from the kit status email is that catch-up is happening. I figured better to have as much in hand as possible and the cost of some additional shipping for back ordered seats is worth the peace of mind of getting what I can now.
FlightTwins
Member
I agree, when did you order?
When did you order?
Yeah, I am interested in when you ordered your finishing kit. I order mine in May 23, I need it now, installing cabin top and ready to start on doors, but was just informed that I won't get it until November at the earliest and that is if I agree to backorder the seats and pay for their shipping, which I am willing to do at this point.
mulde35d
Well Known Member
I ordered my finish kit in August 2022. Re-ordered with the price increase about 12 hours after it was announced in December 2023 and received the finish kit in August 2024.
The only and primary difference I can see in the seats Van's provided (with the new -1 seat backs of course) are the seat pan. The frame is identical, but Oregon Aero has cloth web in the seat pan upon which the cushions sit while Vans has milled aluminum bars and sheet metal upon which the cushions sit. In the Z-axis I would imagine the Oregon Aero seats with the webbing provide some level of vertical crash force attenuation (can't say how much). I can say with certainty though that other than what the cushions provide, the Van's seat will provide no other energy attenuation in the vertical axis. The milled aluminum bars are stout. Now will that matter? I don't know, I guess you would have to know exactly how you are going to crash your airplane in the future and what G loads you will see in the Z-axis in order to answer that question. But the Van's seats are built very rigidly and appear fairly high quality. Not sure if we will see a patent infringement lawsuit from Oregon Aero in the future, but I wouldn't put it past them based on what I see (assuming of course that OA has any sort of patent on the design to begin with)
The only and primary difference I can see in the seats Van's provided (with the new -1 seat backs of course) are the seat pan. The frame is identical, but Oregon Aero has cloth web in the seat pan upon which the cushions sit while Vans has milled aluminum bars and sheet metal upon which the cushions sit. In the Z-axis I would imagine the Oregon Aero seats with the webbing provide some level of vertical crash force attenuation (can't say how much). I can say with certainty though that other than what the cushions provide, the Van's seat will provide no other energy attenuation in the vertical axis. The milled aluminum bars are stout. Now will that matter? I don't know, I guess you would have to know exactly how you are going to crash your airplane in the future and what G loads you will see in the Z-axis in order to answer that question. But the Van's seats are built very rigidly and appear fairly high quality. Not sure if we will see a patent infringement lawsuit from Oregon Aero in the future, but I wouldn't put it past them based on what I see (assuming of course that OA has any sort of patent on the design to begin with)
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I’d like to hear from Vans engineering on this, although it’s probably proprietary. Remember that in the crash scenario we’re talking about the pilot will suddenly ‘weigh’ a half ton or more. I personally have seen a ‘breaker bar’ bent (under abuse) with less force than that.
This is my take as well.
Carl
see post 128
If anyone has high res pix of the latest Van's, Oregon Aero, South Florida, or any other market offerings of RV-10 front seats, that you're willing to share, please forward to me at [email protected]
Thanks in advance.
Thanks in advance.
If you research what Oregon Aero has said for many years regarding the safety of their seat design, you will find that they said the seat structure itself was designed to have near zero vertical energy absorption. The reason being that it is impossible to prevent the rebound of that energy back into the spine of the occupant, with this type of seat. The dissipation of the energy is done with proper design of the foam cushion system, using foam that can take an instantaneous compression under load, and then be highly resistant to rebounding that energy.
So with a proper cushion design, a very stiff seat bottom is actually desirable, to assure no deflection (absorption of energy) that will then be released in the opposite direction.
Oregon Aeros claim was that their fabric seat bottom was specifically engineered to have very low deflection under crash load.
BTW, my understanding of why an in house seat solution was designed is that it had been a struggle for many years to get Oregon Aero to deliver seats, and when they did the cost was constantly going up.
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