<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">In a message dated 11/14/2002 10:36:51 AM Eastern Standard Time, tony@radiosouthrc.com writes:<BR>
<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">----- Original Message -----<BR>
From: "Nik Middleton" <middletn@spinmail.com><BR>
To: <discussion@nsrca.org><BR>
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 9:30 AM<BR>
Subject: RE: similar design<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
>Interesting list, one thing stands out though, there don't seem to be<BR>
that<BR>
>many new US designs these days. Not trying to be contentious here, merely<BR>
>making an observation. At this year's Euro champs, I didn't see one US<BR>
>designed plane out of 150 aircraft, yes I know it's Europe, but you would<BR>
>have thought there'd be one or two.<BR>
><BR>
>I'm aware that the Focus is a great flying plane, functional etc, but no<BR>
one<BR>
>could say it was stylish. Where have all the good looking US designs<BR>
gone?<BR>
>I'm not saying there aren't any out there, but how many new for this year?<BR>
>There seems to be a tremendous growth in the manufacture and design in<BR>
>Europe, PL and ZN seem to be releasing at least two new designs every<BR>
year,<BR>
>and they're been sold as quickly as they're been made.<BR>
><BR>
>Comments?</BLOCKQUOTE><BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><BR>
NIK,<BR>
<BR>
Iam sure you know this: it's hard to turn a buck, designing and kitting Pattern models in US. Then selling them to us, a fairly fickle crowd of maybe a couple thousand customers at best. Do the math and you will find that even for a stellar product, the earnings would be what, 50K$ maybe? It's tough to make ends meet with that, so these are more labors of love.<BR>
<BR>
I think that Europe has an advantage in that their profit expectations are far more modest than here. The other thing we also don't know is the European kit makers' affiliations with other ventures. It would not surprise me if at least one of the kit makers was primarily doing work for his country's government first, and doing the model kitting in spare<BR>
time.<BR>
<BR>
Here, government work of an independent nature is so lucrative, that one would never waste his time making model planes for peanuts. He or she could be earning big bucks on a government contract, creating molds and casting composite parts for some gizmo too small to bother the big government labs with. <BR>
<BR>
One man's opinion<BR>
<BR>
Matt Kebabjian</FONT></HTML>