Why has Vashon sold so few Rangers, and will MOSAIC turn that around?

MountainDude

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MountainDude
I am really curious why this plane has not taken off? Pun intended.
Affordable to buy, cheap to fly, ridiculously spacious, well behaved, well supported (made in USA)...
They have sold just under 100 Rangers in 7 years.
The only criticism I have heard is low useful load.

If 3 partners bought into it, it would have a very low entry and ongoing costs.
So why have they not sold 1000s?
 
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Looking at the field, I suspect the styling didn’t grab the emotions and all the very real rational reasons couldn’t overcome that easily. I can’t figure out why flight schools don’t have a couple for people to build time on. Reminds me of the 1970’s Bellanca 7ACA cheap Champ. 5K inquiries, only 10 or 15 with a check. We say we want cheaper planes but when one comes up… suddenly the deep pockets prevail. I see Rangers flying around North Puget Sound all the time. Here’s best wishes that they can hang on until MOSAIC and up the useful loads.
 
Another plane that should have done better is the Glasair Merlin that was sold off to China and disappeared from the market.
 
For those that don't know, Vashon is owned by the the owner of Dynon. I think @Tools may have a less than sterling review IIRC.

Honestly you think mosaic and LSA are the savior of GA, you will be mistaken. If I had 160k to spend on an LSA, I think I'd rather spend that on a Dakota. When all is said and done, yearly costs won't be all that dissimilar. They haven't sold 1000's because the LSA market isnt nearly as large as one would think. And it doesn't sound like they're robust enough to take a market share from the 172
 
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I flew with @Tools in that one once and had a pretty good time in it, I was really impressed with the avionics and handling. Definitely some quirks to it, and adjustment of the pedals left a lot to be desired. I can see why it might be a bridge too far for flight schools.
 
My take is that it's 160k for something that looks like a stripped down 152. I'm sure it's a nice airplane, but for the price there's a lot of more capable aircraft out there for less.
 
A lot more capable *used aircraft out there, I think you mean. That’s a big difference. I have wondered why they don’t take-off, too, but have no answers.

I’m getting back into the air these days. My plane is still in maintenance hell and I can’t even find a plane to rent. Flight school just denied me on account of a new influx of students, the local flying clubs have hopelessly long waitlists… Seems like a modestly well funded chap could buy 5 or 6 of these bad boys, probably at a discount, and instantly open up a robust flying school. Maybe that’ll be my next career.
 
The problem to me is the engine.

Having operated plenty of O-200 powerred aircraft and a few Rotax 912's the Rotax is without doubt the better engine. Its lighter runs on mogas with 10% ethanol and will last for ever.

Like the Cessna and the Skycatcher they put the wrong engine in it.
 
:yeahthat:
Also, no tailwheel. But mainly this:
If I had 160k to spend on an LSA, I think I'd rather spend that on a Dakota. ... They haven't sold 1000's because the LSA market isnt nearly as large as one would think.
set of people with 160k to spend ∩ set of pilots ∩ subset of pilots who would buy an LSA = a small set

Then again, someone needs to buy the new stuff, so that I can afford the used stuff 20 years later...
 
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It would be about price if they can make a cirrus challenger for a lower price.

It is sad that we don’t have more affordable planes.
 
I may be projecting my personal views onto this question, but I would surmise that the people with the cash to spend on a toy priced between $100K-$1M have a few common characteristics:
Except you are missing the “a true desire to fly an aircraft” on your list which crosses all barriers financial or otherwise. In my experience, the demographic of private aviation crosses all walks of life and for many different reasons. What I’ve found that has changed in the past 40 years is the ongoing lack of desire to fly, or even work on aircraft, across that demographic. In other words, no desire, no market to support and so on.

Now, present a market to the aircraft OEMs and they’ll jump on it just as Textron did with two brand-new, clean-sheet aircraft in recent times. Regardless, its this same lack of desire that hit the LSA market and any other move on the private side of aircraft ownership. People have changed and aviation no longer holds the same interest as it did 30 years ago.
 
Top Gun: Maverick was the top grossing US movie of 2022, #2 worldwide. Planes are still cool, and they still attract viewers.
I watched this and the original again back to back with my wife. I'm not convinced it was the Tomcat or Super Hornet that kept her interest. We are roughly the same age as the protagonists in the movies.
 
Top Gun: Maverick was the top grossing US movie of 2022, #2 worldwide. Planes are still cool, and they still attract viewers.
Sure, but people watch Tom Cruise flying a jet fighter in Top Gun, then find that the reality of GA is closer to five o'clock Charlie on MASH. It was different when you could go out an fly an airplane not that different from what you just saw Errol Flynn step out of on the big screen.
 
I think too, simulators seem to be vastly more popular than the real thing. They have gotten very good (at least from a layman's standpoint) and you can fly things you'd never be able to in real life. Many today can't see the point in the cost or risk of the real thing.

I occasionally fly simulator online with some college buddies, who all could afford to fly if they wanted, but they prefer to stick to the sim and flying with me on rare occasions. They religiously meet online once a week and fly all sorts of planes, all over the world.
 
Honestly, looking at the past to find solutions for the future is a common problem.

If you want to build a relatively large number of an airplane, you have to understand your target market.

In the trainer category/4-seat or less 172-ish sized category, the 800-lb gorilla to tackle is the national 141 schools. ATP ordered 40 C-172s last year and has 95 on order to deliver by end of 2025. Their fleet has over 500 airplanes. Aeroguard has about 200 planes with about half being Archer TXs. ERAU has about 100 total planes, UND about 125.

Getting those big operators to buy is the only way to produce large numbers of planes in that segment and is challenged by a lot of institutional inertia.

Fine, let’s not target that market then, let’s target the hobbyist, who today is likely looking for cross-country capability. Cirrus is the marker dominator and they have 135 operations buying their planes. That segment isn’t looking for what Vashon has. Okay, target the EAB crowd. Like it or not, that market isn’t looking for a Ranger either.

Unfortunately, that leaves a really small target population to position their ‘innovative’ product in. They believed if they just built a 172-ish sized copy for 1/4 the price, people would come. Instead the people with $160-200K are buying a different capability, one that Vashon didn’t try to compete against.

Had Vashon been building RV-10 type aircraft at $225K/pop, they may have found a more viable market to target.
 
Also, the target market for larger, more capable planes is totally gone. The market buying 206 / 310 Cessnas and the like were business owners who wanted the flexibility of flying themselves. Today, that can be done with charters far cheaper. In the past, dispatch rate wasn't a big deal. If they were a day late due to weather, everyone would wait for them. Today, a charter will fly in anything but the absolute worst weather.
 
Aopa should take out a superbowl ad. That would fix things.
 
I'm not sure the low volumes are the fault of the engineering, more the fault of advertising...

No, low volumes are a result of bad assumptions on the market segment. They took the approach of if we build they will buy it instead of asking the fundamental question of what airplane does the market want that we can sell at their price point and how many do we have to sell to stay viable.
 
Great airplanes have two things in common.....Performance and Looks.

The Vashon has the performance...........but lacks any good looks.

Here is what is I mean..
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Perhaps Vashon should be marketing a taildragger bushplane version of the Ranger.
I think too, simulators seem to be vastly more popular than the real thing. They have gotten very good (at least from a layman's standpoint) and you can fly things you'd never be able to in real life. Many today can't see the point in the cost or risk of the real thing.
Seems true of sex nowadays, too...
 
No, low volumes are a result of bad assumptions on the market segment. They took the approach of if we build they will buy it instead of asking the fundamental question of what airplane does the market want that we can sell at their price point and how many do we have to sell to stay viable.

Much like the point of a magazine is to convince me that the latest [nonsense] is interesting, the point of advertising is to tell me why I should buy the product. Assumptions my foot, hire an advertiser to turn every Corvette buyer in America into a plane buyer instead.
 
Pilots don't trust new aircraft.
 
Much like the point of a magazine is to convince me that the latest [nonsense] is interesting, the point of advertising is to tell me why I should buy the product. Assumptions my foot, hire an advertiser to turn every Corvette buyer in America into a plane buyer instead.

In product development, identifying the market segment, target audience, and positioning your product for that audience is what drives the business case to invest. If that research doesn’t support the product financials, it shouldn’t be developed.

Too many companies skip or wave their hands at this step, even though it’s fundamental.

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ETA: the Vashon guys also should have done this kind of research, too.
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…They have sold just under 100 Rangers in 7 years.
Coming back to this, because of the theory of relativity. Quantity isn’t the best measure; a better way to look at this is production capability and orders.

Seven years ago, Vashon said their production capability was 20 aircraft annually. For the 6 year period since deliveries started, they delivered 83% of capacity, not accounting for Covid delays. Not bad, overall.

The second question, order backlogs, is the best leading indicator for demand. I can’t quickly find info on that though. So, whether the company is sustainable on $5M/yr in revenue is hard to answer right now.
 
Anyone who can afford a $195k plane can also afford a $275k plane,
You made some fair points but I don't believe the above is true. It may be for some but certainly not for "anyone" ...
 
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Why do you think this is the case?
In general, technology. The fact a large demographic of gamers are in their 30s and drone registrations are over 800K points to a very telling shift. In simple terms, recreational aviation has more competition that wasn’t there 30 years ago.
Thinking this through again, I'm not sure that this characteristic has much to do with the people who buy new aircraft.
In the context of the OP its everything. Aviation career path individuals is a completely separate discussion which has little to do with Vashon Rangers and MOSAIC. You have to keep in mind one of the reasons the LSA movement “failed” to generate the interest and numbers is directly related to a lack of a desire to fly aircraft by the masses. Same happened after NASA’s AGATE program ended in 2000 which gave birth to the Cirrus SR20, Columbia 300, and the Toyota/Rutan TAA-1 yet only the SR20 survived. Why?
Now, without giving it any more thought, which group do you target if you want to build a successful profitable manufacturing business?
Neither, for the simple reason people would rather do other things for recreation than own and fly aircraft. But as I mentioned above give those same OEMs a viable market and they’ll jump on it. For example, the Beechcraft Denali is a clean-sheet single-turbine with a clean-sheet GE engine on the front. The Cessna 408 is another clean-sheet aircraft that was developed for an established market. So the “target” is specific to the market and not to a group of people per se. In my experience, the aviation industry tends to follow their own path which at times doesn't follow how other industries work out things.
 
The problem to me is the engine.

Having operated plenty of O-200 powerred aircraft and a few Rotax 912's the Rotax is without doubt the better engine. Its lighter runs on mogas with 10% ethanol and will last for ever.

Like the Cessna and the Skycatcher they put the wrong engine in it.
A few years ago I remember seeing the EPI engine and the first start up on youtube. One of the guys in the background was John Torode of Vashon/Dynon.
 
It is sad that we don’t have more affordable planes.

We have plenty of affordable planes. We don't have affordable new planes.

The used inventory of airworthy, capable aircraft is presently satisfying much of the demand. Personally, I saw no need to shell out a truckload of money for a new(er) airplane when a model from 1969 had the capability that I want for a tiny fraction of the cost. People who have the money to buy airplanes didn't reach that point by being inefficient with how they handle money, and for many of us it's simply a better financial decsion to buy used.


You have to want to do it, be able to do it, and have the financial wherewithal to pay for doing it. Compare that to more casual hobbies like classic cars, sportscars, a beach house, hunting/firearms, etc. The training level required for most of these is nowhere near that for a PPL, and the penalty - both physical and financial - for a mistake is far lower.

OK, so that leaves us with two other groups of potential customers:

1) People who have high disposable income and want the utility that they can get from a personal aircraft, with the fun of flying being a secondary benefit. These are the people who buy $1M+ planes, and many (most?) treat them as business expenditures.
2) People who really want to fly, but don't have a business justification for it and thus fund it as a hobby.

These two quotes, which I think are accurate, point to a demographic that is mostly age 50+ (roughly) and successful at a non-flying career. Yet nobody is marketing flight training or airplanes to that group. Instead, we see article after article, advertisement after advertisement, discussion group after discussion group, et cetera ad infinitum, aimed at getting young people into aviation as a career. This helps the airlines, so let the airlines carry their own water. It does nothing to advance personal private flying, and only sells small GA aircraft by increasing demand at the flight schools.

I've said this before - to grow GA, what we need isn't a Young Eagles program but an Old Buzzards program.


If you are correct, something has changed either in people's willingness and interest in doing things that are moderately difficult, or in their view of how accessible flying is (or is not).

I believe something has indeed changed. I think people are still interested in doing things that are moderately difficut, but personal flying is not viewed as accessible or worthwhile. There has been a cultural shift.

I'm not sure whether the chicken preceded the egg or vice versa, but if you want a simple snapshot of the shift then spend a while perusing old TV shows from the 60s and 70s.

Everyone on POA knows of the Andy Griffith episode where Aunt Bee learned to fly, but that's hardly the only example. Columbo flew a Bonanza on an episode of that show, and Johnny Cash used a Cessna to murder his wife on another. Mannix flew a Grumman Tiger on one episode. Several of the old Perry Mason shows had private pilots and small aircraft. There are many other examples.

And then there were the shows that were specifically themed around aviation. The kid's show Sky King is hardly the only example, though it inspired many from that generation to learn to fly. There was also the TV show 12 O'Clock High, based on the movie. Or how about The Flying Fisherman, with old Gadabout Gaddis. Or maybe Ripcord. Or Baa Baa Black Sheep. The list goes on and on and on.....

I wonder how much of a lift GA might have received had Tim Taylor been building an RV in his garage instead of a hotrod.

But today? If you ever see a private airplane in a modern TV show, it's guaranteed to be a luxury multimillion dollar jet, probably a Gulfstream, usually owned and used by the bad guy. No depiction of a typical Joe flying his Cessna to see a ballgame or landing his Cub on a remote lake.

This is a different age.
 
A few years ago I remember seeing the EPI engine and the first start up on youtube. One of the guys in the background was John Torode of Vashon/Dynon.
This is on a May '23 update from EPI.

"THE ENGINE DESCRIBED HERE WAS DESIGNED AND BUILT BY EPI, Inc. FOR AN UNDISCLOSED CLIENT COMPANY AS DESCRIBED BELOW..."​


Then says all over it is designed to be a clean sheet 125hp O-200 replacement. Hmm.

I see the Rangers flying quite a bit at their factory airport. One was doing landings for a long time into the grass the other day. With a gross weight and power upgrade they would be quite the little utility machine.
 
With a gross weight and power upgrade they would be quite the little utility machine.

Supposedly they're designed for a higher weight, so that if MOSAIC goes through it's just a paperwork thing to give them a decent useful load. Or so I was told by the Vashon rep at SNF a couple of years ago.
 

These two quotes, which I think are accurate, point to a demographic that is mostly age 50+ (roughly) and successful at a non-flying career. Yet nobody is marketing flight training or airplanes to that group. …

Uh, Cirrus targets almost exactly that demographic, just a broader age range. We have Cirrus flight school that puts together 4-6 person partnerships, puts their order on the books, then runs all four to six thru PPL and Instrument in SR20s. By the time all is said and done, if there’s a wait for a delivery, it’s not that long.
 
Supposedly they're designed for a higher weight, so that if MOSAIC goes through it's just a paperwork thing to give them a decent useful load. Or so I was told by the Vashon rep at SNF a couple of years ago.
I was wondering about that! I'm curious as to how many other airframes have a higher practical useful load and are just artificially set to meet 1320 max gross per the regs. Heck, even an extra 30 lbs or so would go pretty far in my case.
 
I was wondering about that! I'm curious as to how many other airframes have a higher practical useful load and are just artificially set to meet 1320 max gross per the regs. Heck, even an extra 30 lbs or so would go pretty far in my case.

There are others. The Jabiru LSA flies as a 4-seater overseas.
 
This is on a May '23 update from EPI.

"THE ENGINE DESCRIBED HERE WAS DESIGNED AND BUILT BY EPI, Inc. FOR AN UNDISCLOSED CLIENT COMPANY AS DESCRIBED BELOW..."​


Then says all over it is designed to be a clean sheet 125hp O-200 replacement. Hmm.

I see the Rangers flying quite a bit at their factory airport. One was doing landings for a long time into the grass the other day. With a gross weight and power upgrade they would be quite the little utility machine.
Here's the video, the bearded guy in the background is John Torode of Dynon/Vashon. Now, the video is a few years old so who knows if the project fizzled out.

 
Here's the video, the bearded guy in the background is John Torode of Dynon/Vashon. Now, the video is a few years old so who knows if the project fizzled out.

That's a long way to go to get a Rotax 912.
 
Uh, Cirrus targets almost exactly that demographic, just a broader age range. We have Cirrus flight school that puts together 4-6 person partnerships, puts their order on the books, then runs all four to six thru PPL and Instrument in SR20s. By the time all is said and done, if there’s a wait for a delivery, it’s not that long.
That's awesome. And probably works out great as 1/4 or 1/6 of a plane is about the right amount to own.

Those of us in the sticks can barely find a clapped 172 or instructor to get our licenses. And the experience is so terrible you basically have to own your own after ppl to schedule further training.

Flying club? Slim chance, and if there is one its run by a guy that uses the club to fly for free.
 
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