We certainly are fortunate to have John and his dedication to our hobby.
I wonder if he could ever move ARF/ARC manufacturing in house. I understand he has quite a facility.
That is an excellent question Dick. ..... I, and I'm sure many others, wish this could happen. But sadly, my guess is that the answer is no.
I pose this question to my college students every semester. The discussion ends up highlighting all the reasons why we are sending our jobs off-shore. >30% of all our mfg. jobs have been moved off shore in the past 10 years. Sadly, this is a systemic problem that will not be resolved soon. My guess is that John would like to mfg. them here if it was at all possible, but forces beyond his control make it impossible for him to do so.
In the 1990s a friend started manufacturing Scale 35% ARC RC planes in Phoenix AZ. He really wanted to keep making them in this country. But after < yr. he had to move his production to a family members small factory in Mexico. He still could not make a profit there so after < yr. he had to move his production to China.
With the above said, we do have a small cottage industry that produces excellent ARCs/ARFs here in our country. These are mostly custom made planes. These perfectly built component aircraft (ARCs?) have been flown by many of the top CLPA pilots in the nation for decades. They are not mass produced and therefore cost $1,000+ and UP (some over $3000). The waiting list is long for the small # of planes. After pricing one of these planes it helped me see what a fantastic bargain John's latest CLPA ARC/ARFs are at a cost of only $200 to $250.
Comments are always welcome on this forum, but if you want to comment on this potentially heated issue PLEASE do what Dick did and keep it on the narrow point of CL ARF/ARCs mfg.. There are plenty of Political and Business Forums where we all can discuss the wider topic of our nations problem with sending jobs off-shore. Thank you in Advance.
Regards,