There was of course a composite version of the Pelican, JCD 03 or 04 if I recall. All rounded and glider-like, with a beautiful blown sailplane canopy. Just adorable.
But as has been discussed
ad infinitum already, the cost of molds and everything that goes with it must be considered in the "cheap" aspect of this. Autoreply has steadfastly maintained that composites are cheaper and faster in a production environment, and he's
far more qualified to talk about that than I. But this is a homebuilt airplane, not a production airplane, so that skews the equation a little. More importantly, the time/effort/cost/space/infrastructure for the person or company making the kit (assuming that there is a kit) strongly favors flat sheet metal instead of a molded fuselage.
Imagining myself as a potential manufacturer of kits for this aircraft (where's that Ferrari dealerhsip?), the first thing that I can see is that with sheet metal, I don't need any manufacturing space with molds, vacuum pumps, rolls of bleeder cloth, buckets of resin, etc. I simply have the raw materials shipped from the metal supplier directly to the CNC / waterjet shop, hand them a thumb drive with the cut files, and they tell me to come back Thursday with the truck and a check. I tell them they can even keep the scrap aluminum, and they make a few extra bucks on it for beer money. So I don't even have to use the truck to haul away the scrap.
So even at the very beginning, and even with all other factors in material cost or design considerations identical, I've already saved X amount of floor space, monthly rent, etc. by not having to have or store tooling. My main expense is the area for storage of the cut parts, and to pack the kits for shipping. So I can rent a smaller shop for this business than I would otherwise have had to do.
Cha-Ching, saves money from step 1.
But I have also not had to spend any of my time time (or money on shop personnel) to make the parts. Nobody had to mix the resin, or lay out the infusion manifold, or roll on the peel ply. No wet-knifing the parts, no sandpaper, no peeling off the infusion bleeders and layers of plastic. No motorized grinder trimming or sanding the edges of carbon, spraying toxic itchy carbon dust all over a shop that then needs to be cleaned up by somebody. None of it.
Cha-Ching...
Now it comes time to ship the kits out (to the crowd of rioting customers who are making me filthy rich in aviation). The primary majority of the sheet metal would go out as a stack of 5 or 6 layers of thin sheet metal and one layer of plexiglas, sandwiched in cardboard, with wood strips on the sides. And one 4 inch diameter 8 foot long piece of PVC pipe with caps on the ends for the tubes, extrusions and bent angles. The composite fuselage shells would have required a 3 x 3 x 8 foot wooden crate to be built and then shipped.
Cha-Ching...
Pardon my smart-ass-ness, but those cost savings alone are pretty significant factors. Importantly, for a small niche market thing like this, being able to do it without any of the one-time startup costs of molds, no staff and payroll, and significantly reducing the pre-revenue outlay of shop space, is a freakin'
huge deal to a small entrepreneur guy who would be funding this out of his pocket as a roll of the dice.
The composite fuselage would look prettier, have a little lower drag, etc. But at what cost? The composite fuselage would create a lot of momentum towards a molded canopy, like the last version of Debreyer's Pelican. Maybe one of you guys can call Aircraft Windshields or Todd's Canopies or whoever, and ask for a price on a Libelle glider canopy (very close approximation to this requirement).
I'll be right there with the Defibrillator to bring you back
