RCU Forums - View Single Post - DLE Engine Pricing
View Single Post
Old 12-22-2010 | 09:00 PM
  #211  
Tired Old Man
Senior Member
My Feedback: (1)
 
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 18,602
Likes: 0
Received 3 Likes on 3 Posts
From: Valley Springs, CA
Default RE: DLE Engine Pricing

When you consider the wholesale value of those monthly sales it really doesn't amount to all that many dollars. As for DA or the other majors losing sales to DLE or anyone else, consider the following.

Using a hypothetical situation, you have a company that flies a minimum of 2 flights a day at 25 locations. Each flight lasts, let's say 12 hours, using 2 aircraft per day. Lets say the engines are changed out every 300-400 hours. So you start out with 50 engines with each being replaced once a month. That doesn't account for spares. The manufacturer selling the engines is selling a minimum of 50 engines a month to that one company. Probably a few more than that. Now figure there are about 1,100 small UAV (sUAS) manufacturers actively competing in that market, with roughly 75% of that 1,100 using small gas two strokes. By small I mean 300cc and smaller. Then consider that a lot of those companies replace engines at 100 hours.

So who's really holding the market share? It's certainly not modeling. BTW, that hypothetical situation was quite understated.