**EXCELLENT NEWS RECEIVED RE: 40:1 Gear Sets**

[MikeOH]

8 minutes ago, Matthew P said:

Are you frigging serious, I know what those things cost to make...that's not fair market, that's rape right there.

 

And, sadly, my bet is $3K is going to be way less than what Lasar is going to charge

[tcal780]

I do appreciate all the work you put into this. I was hopeful for an alternative solution. Unfortunately, you got the ol', "Good job, buddy. We'll take it from here." I mean, Mooney and Lasar could have done this all along.

[PT20J]

2 hours ago, Echo said:

I will scrap the plane before I pay that.

Call me when you are ready to scrap it and I'll take it off your hands and truck it away at no charge. I can buy the gears for maybe $5K and sell it for $60K and pocket $55K and we'll both be happy. 

[MikeOH]

34 minutes ago, PT20J said:

Call me when you are ready to scrap it and I'll take it off your hands and truck it away at no charge. I can buy the gears for maybe $5K and sell it for $60K and pocket $55K and we'll both be happy. 

So, Skip, at what price would you 'cry foul' for these gears?  Obviously, you're okay with $5K...how about $10K...how about $20K, after all the plane's grounded without them, right?  I'm all for capitalism, but I accept the need for anti-trust laws to curb monopolistic price gouging.  Or, do you think that just doesn't apply when it comes to 'rich airplane owners'?

[Echo]

57 minutes ago, PT20J said:

Call me when you are ready to scrap it and I'll take it off your hands and truck it away at no charge. I can buy the gears for maybe $5K and sell it for $60K and pocket $55K and we'll both be happy. 

Responses like yours have gotten me thrown out multiple times.  Not today bro.

[PT20J]

57 minutes ago, MikeOH said:

So, Skip, at what price would you 'cry foul' for these gears?  Obviously, you're okay with $5K...how about $10K...how about $20K, after all the plane's grounded without them, right?  I'm all for capitalism, but I accept the need for anti-trust laws to curb monopolistic price gouging.  Or, do you think that just doesn't apply when it comes to 'rich airplane owners'?

Of course parts prices are getting ridiculous. Tempest, Hartzell, Lasar, etc. But, scrapping the plane when the part to keep it flying is available at a fraction of the value of the airplane seems to me to be a drastic and emotional overreaction. That was my point. 

These things are antiques. The last Dukes actuators were built almost 50 years ago probably before a lot of Mooney owners were born. Old airplanes are cheap to buy and expensive to maintain. That’s just a fact. But a $5K gear (if that’s what it turns out to be) is cheaper than converting to an Eaton actuator and certainly cheaper than buying a newer airplane. 

I never said I was OK with Lasar’s pricing. I just said if someone wanted to scrap their otherwise good airplane because it needed gears and they objected to the price then I would take it off their hands.

[MikeOH]

@PT20J

Yes, I got your point.  I just think your response to @Echo failed to recognize his point!

I note you did not actually answer my question...I'll phrase it a bit differently: if your plane needed these gears (I realize you only have the low-cost $2500 no-back spring) at what price point would you sell your plane?  People spend 1/2 the value on an engine OH, but if that no-back spring was 50% the value of your plane would you sell or scrap vs. 'bend over' and take it 'just because?'

Your arguments seem designed to justify these ridiculous prices.  Just the fact that our planes are old/antiques is insufficient explanation for $2500 no-back springs, $5,000 gears, or whatever.  I don't buy the idea that they are inherently any more expensive to maintain than newer aircraft.  The usurious prices result in LACK of maintenance which a subsequent owner has to 'catch-up' with in many cases.

The frustration (and anger, frankly) is that part pricing is NOT being based on cost plus a fair markup (50%-100%), but just what a monopolistic vendor can get away with.  Yeah, I realize 'it is what it is' but I lose patience when I hear 'justifications' for this practice.

 

[201Steve]

7 hours ago, Echo said:

Come on Steve.  What is a fair mark-up?

I mean, you said over $1,000 and you’d retire the airplane. That’s the cost of an aviation headset. Hell a starter is like $2,500 now. 
 

I would be ecstatic to repair a once-every-fifty year part on my airplane for $1,500. 
 

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to pay $149 like the version they probably sell for some tractor application but until there is regulatory reform to decrease the liability and thus increase competition (particularly for antique applications) there’s no incentive/ money to be made unless it’s at an insane margin. Blame big brother for that. 
 

LASAR just recently had to recall a ton of parts it was supplying bc big bro decided they were doing something wrong in quality control. (I forget what it was but it’s on here somewhere). You are paying for that regulatory BS in other parts runs. 
 

It is what it is. I’m not defending it, but at least you didn’t pay $1.2 million on the front end for a piston single (that does the same thing sorta), the now going rate. We are still ahead. 

[EricJ]

4 hours ago, 201Steve said:

LASAR just recently had to recall a ton of parts it was supplying bc big bro decided they were doing something wrong in quality control. (I forget what it was but it’s on here somewhere). You are paying for that regulatory BS in other parts runs. 

I don't know that it was BS.   This was the new owners of LASAR restarting a process after making a geographical move, so I wouldn't be surprised at all that there were genuine problems that the regulator caught.   LASAR put themselves into the position of having to redo a lot of their authorizations, that was their decision.

[201Steve]

@EricJ which part is bs? The only relevant fact is they lost money from a regulatory enforcement. Whether they could have prevented it is almost entirely irrelevant. It’s something that has to be dealt with whether on the front end or the back end no matter what in the form of time and money , and even the best of the best are going to get hit with regulatory enforcement no matter what. The rules are too cumbersome that it’s absolutely impossible to do right every single time. 

[MikeOH]

4 hours ago, 201Steve said:

@EricJ which part is bs? The only relevant fact is they lost money from a regulatory enforcement. Whether they could have prevented it is almost entirely irrelevant. It’s something that has to be dealt with whether on the front end or the back end no matter what in the form of time and money , and even the best of the best are going to get hit with regulatory enforcement no matter what. The rules are too cumbersome that it’s absolutely impossible to do right every single time. 

The 'relevant fact' is that we, the customer, are going to pay for what is, ultimately, the fault of the vendor to follow the rules; regardless of how lame and cumbersome they may or may not be.  Pretty true of any regulated industry; not unique to aviation.

[Ragsf15e]

On 2/16/2025 at 5:51 PM, MikeOH said:

I have 20:1 gears.

Can I simply swap in 40:1 gears, or are there additional mods required to the Duke's assembly?

To play devils advocate (and as I’m just about to finish my econ masters), we generally try to use free markets.  Now there are some natural monopolies that have price controls (utilities come to mind), but free markets with competition generally lead to better (or at least acceptable) outcomes.  If we price control everything, econ 101 says we will have shortages (look at rent control housing).  To me, this seems like an instance where competition could effectively lower the price a little but likely not much as there are very few needed and we need them very badly (or the airplane is grounded).  Couple that with startup costs to form a business to make or acquire parts.  So maybe another msc or one of us starts a company to sell them cheaper than they currently are and still make a profit.  That’s the American way.  However, I think we all realize we won’t be able to live on that profit even at high markups because of the low quantities.  

[MikeOH]

10 minutes ago, Ragsf15e said:

To play devils advocate (and as I’m just about to finish my econ masters), we generally try to use free markets.  Now there are some natural monopolies that have price controls (utilities come to mind), but free markets with competition generally lead to better (or at least acceptable) outcomes.  If we price control everything, econ 101 says we will have shortages (look at rent control housing).  To me, this seems like an instance where competition could effectively lower the price a little but likely not much as there are very few needed and we need them very badly (or the airplane is grounded).  Couple that with startup costs to form a business to make or acquire parts.  So maybe another msc or one of us starts a company to sell them cheaper than they currently are and still make a profit.  That’s the American way.  However, I think we all realize we won’t be able to live on that profit even at high markups because of the low quantities.  

Oh, I absolutely believe in free market capitalism.  I'm just pointing out that what we have, likely due to such a small market, is a de-facto monopoly.  As such, free market pricing is NOT at work.  We are experiencing price gouging, plain and simple; there is no competition.

I just don't believe the cost to add, say these Duke's gears, is as oppressive as being assumed.  It's not like an existing aviation parts vendor/distributor has start-up costs; they're already in the biz!  They are just adding another part to their offerings. Their aviation products' liability insurance premiums are not suddenly going to jump enormously just because they added another part.

As far as profit, sure they couldn't 'live on' the profit of one part even at blackmail pricing at the low volumes we are discussing.  But that's not the situation.  Again, it's an existing vendor of aviation parts and adding parts helps spread overhead.

Total guess, but I suspect the pricing is designed to cover ALL of their up-front costs (e.g. tooling and min order $) with the sale of only a few parts to a few initial "price be damned, I'm a rich airplane owner that accepts being screwed 'cause that's the way it is".  After that, they make a fortune on subsequent sales (pure profit less inventory carrying costs) regardless if it takes years to sell off the remaining inventory.

[KSMooniac]

14 minutes ago, MikeOH said:

I just don't believe the cost to add, say these Duke's gears, is as oppressive as being assumed.  It's not like an existing aviation parts vendor/distributor has start-up costs; they're already in the biz!  They are just adding another part to their offerings. Their aviation products' liability insurance premiums are not suddenly going to jump enormously just because they added another part.

It might be a much greater exposure than you're assuming.  I haven't followed the Dukes lineage and have no idea who owns them now, or if they're even in the aircraft business.  I can say with some measure of confidence, though, that none of our Mooneys are exposing them to any liability today with the 18 year limit from the 1994 GARA legislation.  Once they make some new gears and we install them, then that clock starts over, so suddenly they'll have a bunch of >50 year old airplanes that could potentially cause a problem for them, liability-wise.  Granted, a failure of the gear is not likely to kill people in a gear-up landing, but the cost of repairs to a plane today is likely >50k or even more.  I would not put it past an unscrupulous owner (and attorney) to go after them even if it might be 100% pilot error too, but they will still have a cost to defend.  That is what has happened to our industry over and over again with all manner of small parts.

I'm not sure what my pain threshold is yet.  I would like to have a set or even two on the shelf, but I also have a newer actuator and the different emergency extension bits on the shelf already and there is a point where I'll endure the pain to make that swap than pay a ridiculous price for a new gear set.

[MikeOH]

Just now, KSMooniac said:

It might be a much greater exposure than you're assuming.

You could be right.

I'm basing the products' liability cost on being a financial controller in a past life.  We were a manufacturer of consumer and commercial products and our premiums were based on the manufacturing category of our product and the volume of sales of those products.  Adding a new product made only a small incremental difference in our premium.  Admittedly, our products were pretty low risk compared with aviation...so the pricing model could be completely different.

[Matthew P]

41 minutes ago, MikeOH said:

Oh, I absolutely believe in free market capitalism.  I'm just pointing out that what we have, likely due to such a small market, is a de-facto monopoly.  As such, free market pricing is NOT at work.  We are experiencing price gouging, plain and simple; there is no competition.

I just don't believe the cost to add, say these Duke's gears, is as oppressive as being assumed.  It's not like an existing aviation parts vendor/distributor has start-up costs; they're already in the biz!  They are just adding another part to their offerings. Their aviation products' liability insurance premiums are not suddenly going to jump enormously just because they added another part.

As far as profit, sure they couldn't 'live on' the profit of one part even at blackmail pricing at the low volumes we are discussing.  But that's not the situation.  Again, it's an existing vendor of aviation parts and adding parts helps spread overhead.

Total guess, but I suspect the pricing is designed to cover ALL of their up-front costs (e.g. tooling and min order $) with the sale of only a few parts to a few initial "price be damned, I'm a rich airplane owner that accepts being screwed 'cause that's the way it is".  After that, they make a fortune on subsequent sales (pure profit less inventory carrying costs) regardless if it takes years to sell off the remaining inventory.

There are no startup costs, or initial setup charges, they are just now licensed by mooney to have them produced...now they may have had to pay mooney a licensing fee, but as far as the parts go...it's at no additional cost, which would be absorbed by the customer..it was going to be $80K for the DER/DAR/PMA/initial mfg setup fee for a rum of 40 gear sets...plus additional monies to a MRO facility and liability insurance...for a community of 150-250 airplanes that are affected by the AD/SB

[christaylor302]

I know a lot of work, calling, emailing, begging and pleading went into this. I’m grateful for everyone’s effort.

Yes, several people are going to have their hand out and want their piece before it gets to us, but at least we will have an option now.

Maybe other MSC’s or organizations like McFarlane can get in on the licensing deal and create a little competition.

I’m just glad I won’t be stuck without any options.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[christaylor302]

I know a lot of work, calling, emailing, begging and pleading went into this. I’m grateful for everyone’s effort.

Yes, several people are going to have their hand out and want their piece before it gets to us, but at least we will have an option now.

Maybe other MSC’s or organizations like McFarlane can get in on the licensing deal and create a little competition.

I’m just glad I won’t be stuck without any options.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[AJ88V]

Really glad to hear about this.  All the doom and gloom was making me want to sell the plane.  If the price is reasonable, I might just want to buy a set to hold in inventory.