I just been through the process of looking for a kit to build this winter. Its just hard to believe how little choice there is in the market for kits these days. I have been away from the hobby for 12 years. Back then few airplanes were ARF’s, now few airplanes are kits. Its an understandable transition, people don’t have time/space/expertise to build a model. Still I think that perhaps 10%-20% of the total market would like to build kits. For us its not about the convenience of the ARF. We are makers, we enjoy creating things.

So in the hope that there will be more kits on the market in the future and more people building kits I put together some suggestions for the people who make the kits to help them sell a few more. This isn’t meant to get down on anyone or get negative. I’m sure anyone still making kits is in it for the love of the hobby. I know there cant be a lot of money in it.

5 Ways to Sell More Kits

1. Offer kits that people want to FLY and build. This should be the obvious part but its not happening. Example: Yak’s are hugely popular but there isn’t a single 50cc Yak kit on the market this winter. Update your kits with interlocking parts and prefabrication. Its not enough that you convert and old design to laser cutting, the parts need to interlock to make building easier. Doing menial tasks like beveling hinge lines are boring and take a lot of time. Prefabrication by machine saves build time and gets better results than many can archive on their own.
2. Offer complete kits. Or offer a complete, super high quality hardware package to complement a builders kit. Complete kits included EVERYTHING an ARF airplane would have had. This helps with estimating costs for the builder. A complete kit with hardware shouldn’t cost any more than a similar ARF (why should it?). With an ARF the costs are clear; with a Kit its hard to estimate what the project will ultimately cost. A key kit selling point is that you can get higher quality hardware than an ARF. Offer what you would want on your personal airplane.
3. Provide manuals online. Preferable in HTML with high resolution photos. This lets the builder see what they are in for before they buy the kit. It helps them feel confident that they can complete the project. Update the manuals as needed, HTML is easy to update. HTML manuals can be linked to in a build thread and the images can be more detailed and helpful than the smaller images in a PDF.
4. Provide help with Finishing. For the new generation of ARF buyers that have never built a kit the most difficult part is finishing. Have an ‘official’ color scheme and publish templates for cutting the covering. Provide some Vinyl Graphics (great free advertising!) with every kit. There is general lack of good covering and painting information out there right now that needs to be addressed.
5. Leverage the community. Encourage builders with a variety of skill levels to build your kits and post build threads online. If someone wants to do a build thread get involved and support their efforts. Accept constructive criticism and learn from their mistakes to improve your product. A good build thread can be better than the manual that came with the kit. Link to good build threads from your website.

I wish I was building an MX2 this winter but I may have to wait a few more years before kits of that airplane get produced.

Elastic Tabstops, found via Joel on Software. Totally makes sense to me, where can I get Visual Studio & Eclipse support?

I have been on the tabs side of the holy war for a while now. I think tabs will win in the end and the reason is simple: tabs are metadata and spaces are formatting. If you want to be a slave to your code keep formatting with spaces. Code written with tabs will be useful to tools. Code indented with spaces needs rules (sometimes complex rules) to go along with it to extract the metadata from the formatting.

And now a bold prediction; in 5 years this debate will die when we stop storing the raw code in text. Code will get a markup format just like everything else so we can have even MORE metadata and dynamically change the way the code is presented to us without changing the code. Regions just don’t cut it. The 80 Columns/Emacs/Vi crowd wont get it, they will still be on about spaces…

I’m moving to Oklahoma City in two weeks. This sort of looms large on the immediate horizon. I’m not good at organizing this sort of thing so its pretty crazy.

I have an E-Foamies Extra 300 on order. Its a rubber airplane so I can fly outside like crazy and not worry so much about destroying the airplane. I really want to get some stick time in and improve my flying. I want to start doing competitions by next year. Its also my first ARF (Almost Ready to Fly). I am generally anti ARF but I understand why thats better for most people.

Its also going to be nice to see how this EPP stuff behaves in thin sheets. I see a lot of potential for improvements to the Breeze using hybrid EPP/Depron construction. I have a few crashes on the Breeze now. It keeps breaking in the tail because the tail flexes too easily. I’ll need to modify the plans to help reinforce that area. The elevator needs a redesign as well.
Ruby is cool. Everyone says so, all the cool kids are using it. Seriously, Duck Typing and Mixins are where its at. I seriously cannot count the number of times I wished things worked like that in Java. Its too bad that C#/.NET had to be a feature duoplication of Java. When you look at somehting like Duck Typing or Mixins either is easily a bigger win for developers than all the things you can come up with in .NET that suposedly make it better than Java. I really need a project to do in Ruby.

Google bought @Last Software and now there is a free version of Sketchup. Now, this is awesome, let me tell you, its the best little CAD program I have ever used. Knock down drag out the best. You can pick it up in as little as an hour and grock it in a few days. Thats the good part.

The bad part is the app is a black hole. You can import all sorts of formats into Google Sketchup, particularly AutoCAD’s DXF and DWG formats. This rocks for hobbyists because lots of plans are out there in DXF format and Sketchup is easier and cheaper than AutoCAD. The problem is there is no way to get your work back out of Google Sketchup. You can export a 2d image at an undetermined scale, thats it. Thats totally useless.

Google, if anyone there is reading this, please for the love of hobbyists everywhere, give us a way to print from this thing! Ideally I want 1:1 output of a view/selection to PDF. For extra points allow us to tile or split the PDF to a particular paper size. That way you could print to a consumer printer and reassemble the pages to produce a pattern or plan. I think that functionality would cover 90% of the hobbyist’s need to get output from a CAD tool. I also don’t see it eating into Sketchup pros sales much either as I doubt most hobbyist types would spring for a copy.

Now for the sketchy part. If you download the trial of Sketchup 5 Pro you can get 1:1 PDF output and export to DXF. The trial lasts just 8 hours so use it only for exporting. It can be installed side by side with Google Sketchup. It takes me about a minute to do an export to PDF and DXF so that trial is going to last a long time.