What a Shock!

[Gerald Arana]

I just checked the prices of kits on the Brodak site.............WOW, has the prices ever gone up!

I am absolutely befuddled..... 

Jerry

[Dan McEntee]

   Why are you shocked? We have been discussing this off and on for months, maybe a year or more. Just been getting worse as time goes on. It will be a while , if ever, before things get even CLOSE to normal.
   Type at you later,
     Dan McEntee

[Mike Griffin]

Dan you are correct.  Those of us who are/were in the cottage kit business saw this coming and posted on here a year or more ago about this coming.  I no longer produce kits but the last time I placed an order with Bud Nosen which was a good while ago, they told me to take the current price list I had and add 143% to it.  We have talked about this on here a lot and it should not be a shock to anyone.
Brodak probably held out as long as they could but there is something in business known as replacement cost.
When I first posted about it, I actually had some people on here, accuse me of hyping the situation up and said they had heard this all before and it was all a bunch of made up nonsense.  Well........here we are.

Mike

[GallopingGhostler]

Cost of balsa and to a lesser extent other materials are up. Shipping costs from overseas have risen tremendously. The demand for balsa in other industries (for example, electric power generating wind turbine use) have limited supplies and limited available quality for hobbyist industry use. Then add worldwide Covid19 situation for added complications.

Similar to WW2 and restricted availability, I foresee a shift to alternate building materials such as hardwood used in thinner sections to reduce weight, use of various foam products, plastic and some paper too.

Not long ago someone was making C/L aircraft out of corrugated cardboard.

[Craig Beswick]

Motorman,
I just calculated National Balsas price for the balsa alone for a Ringmaster. $75!

No delivery, no ply, no motor mounts, no landing gear, no bell crank, no hardware no cnc cutting, packaging, instructions or whatever else goes into it.

For people who want to buy kits these companies provide a high quality, proven, product at a fair price, with excellent back up service.

I don't get what you don't get?

Balsa has become extremely expensive. I started in this hobby 4 odd years ago and a scratch built 60" plane cost around $100, in various woods,
to build. Now, it is more like $225.

Craig

[john e. holliday]

Have you done a comparision of the two kits?

[Craig Beswick]

Well $119's not too bad but why is one kit $60 more than the other one? Search for National Balsa on here you'll find several complaints. Not sure I'm buying all this anyway. Someone is getting price gouged somewhere up stream. Maybe my next Ringmaster should be made of cardboard lol.


Motorman

Price of a Ford Mustang versus a Ferrari? Both 2 door sports cars!!!

Big scale operation, Brodak, versus a one man, or, small shop operation, RSM.

Pick whatever balsa supplier you like, the point is the cost of the materials. Then take into account the quality of hardware and sundry materials. I know I will take an RSM horn over a Brodak horn any day. No criticism of Brodaks intended.

If the balsa is $75 there must be another $15-$25 in the rest of it. Say 3 hours+ to cut and put it all together. RSM price seems completely fair to me. In fact if they are only making $70-$80 per kit that seems very cheap to me.

Craig

[Dennis Holler]

This info is pretty easy to find if you do a search.  You have two major things affecting our supply of balsa.  1) Is the wind farms, and 2) Is Covid lockdown effect is Ecuador.  Simple as that.  Note in the article, comments stating balsa price doubled in 2019 just due to the wind farm demand.  You can find this same narrative in a bunch of articles as well.  Assuming wind farms aren't going anywhere, I'd say we are pretty much hosed....

https://timbercheck.blog/2020/11/27/is-that-wind-turbine-made-from-illegally-harvested-balsa-wood/

And here is another article from 2021 stating balsa prices have more than tripled...

https://www.2ea.co.uk/The-Wood-Behind-the-Wind.html

That said,  read the whole second article and note there are some new blade designs using PET as it is now cheaper than balsa at the current price levels.  Soooooo, maybe they will move away from balsa over time and evolve to PET for the complete market leaving us hobbyist the balsa we desire!