Originally Posted by
SushiHunter
Wow, your the first person I heard made some money building r/c kits for people. Reminds me of my grandfather. He was an autobody man in a small town in Nebraska since the end of WWII. Guys around town would buy old cars and stick them in their garage and then invite him over to show them the car's they bought with intentions to restore. Once I was there visiting when one of the guys had my grandfather come over to their house to view such an item. They were in the garage for an hour or so talking about the car and then my grandfather and I left. When we left my grandfather was telling me that he actually hates going over and looking at these type of things because he knows all the guys want to do is get my grandfather to do all the work and then they own and drive the finished product around like they were the ones who did all the work and spent all the time working on.
Such work on r/c planes I guess would pay off if you were a retired guy who wasn't making money with your time outside of building one for someone. Depending on plane, how much time in total would it take? I've been building my SIG Komet now for approximately a month and a half, in the sixth week now. Probably spent roughly on average two hours per weekday evening and between 6 to 8 hours in total over each weekend since the build start date. If I were to build this kit for someone, how much would my time be worth? Lets just hypothetically say it takes me 200 hours from start to finish working on this bird. If they pay me $1 per hour for my labor, I'd make $200.00. Now is someone going to want to pay an additional $200 on top of all the other expenses such as building materials, the kit itself, etc? Just like my grandfather working on other guy's collector cars, building planes for people is no different, the time and efforts you put in are more like charity work. I think most people would elect to just go out and buy and ARF, RTF, PNP, BNF, etc. It would actually be much cheaper going that route vs having it built by someone, unless your doing it all free of charge. This is the other reason why the already built planes are constructed so cheap with cheap materials, because the company which builds them needs to make money some way or the other.
And again, so far all the birds I've wanted have only been offered in unbuilt kits. They don't make a SIG Kougar ARF simply because there is too much work involved building such birds. They'd have to charge more than what most people would be willing to pay for that size of bird. And if they ever do offer it in a ARF, RTF, etc. I guarantee you the quality of the materials and/or construction will decrease compared to the traditional unbuilt SIG Kougar kits.
Yes, I do make money building airplanes for people. Now to be honest the planes that I've built aren't going to be something along the lines of say a 4-Star or a Something Extra, but if somebody really wanted me to build one I would gladly come up with a price to build it for them. For instance, the next in line is a build that the guy and have been going back and forth on for a couple of years and he finally pulled the trigger and got his place in line and I should be getting the kit in the mail and will be starting the build for him by the end of the month. It's a Great Planes Ultra Sport 1000. He has always wanted one, he found the kit, and he knows that he doesn't have the time or skills to build it, so he is paying me to build it. Not only am I going to make some money doing the build but I'm going to have a blast building this because this is one of my all time favorite sport planes. But many of the planes that I have built for people are guys that get tired of showing up at the field with an ARF only to see 5 or 6 others that look exactly the same as theirs.
I'm not going to get rich building planes by any means, but I am making some money doing something that to me is very enjoyable and is actually almost medicinal in ways. Time that I spend on the building table is calming and does wonders to help out my PTSD. I think that many of the people out there that say they are too busy to build would actually benefit if they would take some time and slow down and build and airplane instead of just slapping the parts together. Trust me here because I speak from experience on this subject. I am 49 years old and after having my military career cut short by medical discharge from an injury (hence the PTSD) I started and ran a couple of businesses with my wife, raised a family, rose to become the Forum Manager here at RCU, taught myself photography and videography to cover events for RCU, and I still found time to build airplane kits and get out to the field and fly them. Now that my son is grown and in college I have more time to build which giving a little bit more time to build for others which is where I am able to build for money, but for those that tell me that they don't have time to build an airplane I will simply tell them BS. You have time to do whatever you want to do. I speak from experience here and I can tell you that you can take a simple kit such as a trainer, Sig Something Extra, Sig 4-Star, or similar an spend maybe 20-30 minutes a night and within a month you could easily have that plane built and ready to fly. So to say that you don't have time to build is simply a cop out. Many of those that say they don't have time to build spend more time than that on Facebook every day, so don't tell me you don't have time to build. Anyway, I'm getting off track here. I'm just saying that building airplanes is something I wish more people would really slow down and experience, it's honestly something truly incredible to see the plane you built with your own hands take off for the first time!!
Ok, off my soapbox now!!! back to your regularly scheduled thread now!!!!
Ken