Who will the winner be?

[C5Engineer 1170]

I just sent an email to Kitfox, Rans, Quad City Challenger, and Skyraider using the information from their webpages inquiring about a few different things. Any guesses on who will return my enquiry? Debra at Kitfox is usually pretty quick to respond to my parts questions but I think I used up all my freebies as the last couple of times I never heard anything back.

[C5Engineer 1170]

Ding Ding Ding... and the winner is....................RANS with a 27 minute response time, the answer I needed, a part number and a price.

 

Out of curiosity if you had the funds to purchase a full kit tomorrow and you were hung up between two designs, how much weight would you give company support on which kit you purchased?? For example if you emailed one saying I want to give you 60K of my money and never heard back from them and the other one you got a response back in 27 minutes. Since Aviation management is a hot topic in a class I'm currently taking I am just curious. Me personally I'd have to say it would probably be a fairly large part in my decision only if all other things were equal.

[C5Engineer 1170]

Second place is http://www.uflyit.com/ A company out of Florida that makes aftermarket parts for Challengers. Their bomb cargo pods that strap on the strut are pretty cool.

 

[EDMO 1078]

I hope the bombs are cheaper than their $325 heaters.

EDMO

[BryceKat 125]

27 minute co- cause you know at some point your gonna need them!

[FoxDB 17]

It does not seem like a good idea to add weight to the side of the struts. Granted close to the jury struts would help. But the reason strut diameters are increased with Gross Weight increase I believe is mainly due to buckling in compression (-G's). The side load caused by the extra weight (granted in up direction with -G's) would cause buckling at a lower compressive force. Just my 2 bits.

Dave

[C5Engineer 1170]

Third place is Quad City Challenger. They have fairings for 1/2" , 1" , and 1.5" tubing but they didn't send any pics. I assume it's similiar and slides over the top of a tube. No response yet from Kitfox or Skyraider. I ordered 10 feet of this fairing from Rans. It's $18 per 5ft length.

[High Country 69]

fairings look nice but how are you to get them onto our struts? what is the weight gain? I would think you could make the 1" fairings work with our 7/8" struts if you could get them on

[C5Engineer 1170]

High country these are little bitty fairings for a 1/2" tube. I am just doing my horizontal stab struts with them. They measure 1 5/8" wide and are really flimsy....weight is only a few grams. Sorry for the confusion.

[Emory Bored 61]

What are you doing home?  I thought you were sentenced to 6 months in the sand box?

[C5Engineer 1170]

Still here for another 3 months. Just because I'm deployed doesn't mean we don't have internet....thank god!! I'd go nuts without at least reading about airplanes.

[C5Engineer 1170]

I received an email from Kitfox today and it seems my original mail may have gone lost in Internet land someplace as they were unable to locate it. Good to see John is active on the forums. Thanks for following up.

[Bandit 286]

I wouldn't trust any of them with that kind of money. When I buy anything else the product is sitting on the floor. I don't know why aviation should be any different.