I was wondering why the Nymph is so expensive?

From : Don Stackhouse

Eric,

Thanks for the note!

The cost of a manufactured product has to cover a lot of things, such as the materials required to make it, the cost of the shop it's made in, utilities, tools (including the labor to make and repair them, and to replace them when they wear out), the amortised value of the engineering that had to go into developing it, advertising costs (have you priced a magazine ad recently?), some markups for distributors and dealers so that they can make some profit (otherwise they won't even try to sell it), etc., and of course a (surprisingly small) profit for us (otherwise there's no reason for us to go to all this trouble in the first place).

However, the biggest part of the cost is related to the labor to build it. This includes not only the hourly wages of the person doing the work, but also the indirect labor costs, like the matching Social Security contributions the employer has to make (that's in addition to the SS withholding that comes out of the worker's paycheck), the Worker's Compensation premiums, costs of bookkeeping and accountants, various other taxes, the value of non-productive time for breaks and paid vacation time, etc.. By the time you add up the direct and indirect costs of labor including the utilities for the shop, an hour of labor typically costs a company at least $30 or more.

The Nymph is a handmade all-composite model, just like the Spectres. The fuselage is laid up by hand from fiberglass cloth and epoxy in a fairly elaborate hand-made mold (that wears out and periodically has to be replaced), and the finished fuselage has to be trimmed and cleaned up by hand after it comes out, plus cleaning up the mold for the next one. There's also the cost of the carbon tube tailboom plus the labor to install it during the layup process.

The two wing panels are hot-wired by hand from blocks of styrofoam (six cuts EACH, for the leading edge, trailing edge, both ends, then the two long, slow cuts across the templates for the airfoil shape on the top and bottom). The tip then has to be skillfully cut and sanded to shape, the mylars (more tooling) cleaned and waxed, all the fiberglass and carbon fiber pieces cut out, the leading edge tapes added to the cores (but not wetted out) and the table prepared. The fiberglass skin is then wetted out by hand on the mylars, the carbon and other pieces put in place and wetted out (a very precise and painstaking process for both the fuselage and wings, requiring quite a bit of skill and experience to do correctly and efficiently; too little resin and the parts are weakened, too much and they're heavy and brittle, too fast OR too slow and the fabric doesn't get the proper resin content uniformly distributed), the leading edges wetted and the cores placed in the mylars. The mylars are closed, bleeder and release plies added around them and placed in the vacuum bags, which are then sealed up, positioned and weighted onto the beds and then vacuum applied (a multi-step process if you want the wing to come out straight). The next day the wings are carefully removed from the bags and the mylars, the excess resin and cloth cut off around the edges, then the leading & trailing edges and tips are carefully hand-sanded to remove the last of the flashing (another difficult and highly skilled process if you want it done quickly and efficiently and WITHOUT scrapping the wing in the process). The root of each panel is then cut off with the correct length and dihedral bevel in a jig-equipped table saw (even MORE tooling!).

There's more labor and cost associated with checking all these parts to make sure their quality is up to snuff, and the cost that went into the manufacture of any that aren't and have to be reworked or scrapped.

Then there's the laser-cut tail surfaces and all the little hardware, the cost of the plans and instructions (printing and Xeroxing isn't cheap), the cost of the box and label (also not cheap), and the cost of the labor to carefully assemble the box and pack all this stuff in it. Then there's the cost and labor of running all over town rounding up all these materials, shipping costs and unpacking labor for the materials that get shipped in, and the cost of filling out the paperwork and taking the finished to the post office. If you paid by credit card, there's the service charge for that, and if you paid by check, those have different service charges (by law, there is no such thing as "free checking" for business accounts). And finally there's the time-associated cost of the money we have to spend to make all this happen, that we don't get reimbursed for until after the kit is shipped and your payment finally shows up in our bank account.

If, after all that, there's anything left, Joe and I get to spend some of it on amortizing the engineering labor and materials for developing new and improved products and on stuff for the factory, then divvy up any remainder between ourselves to pay for home mortgages and food for our families.

The cost of a model has very little to do with how big it is; a small model often takes nearly as much labor to make as a larger one. Frankly, I think it's a MAJOR accomplishment that we've been able to keep the Nymph as cheap as it is!

Don Stackhouse
DJ Aerotech