Put the price up if its for pilots !
 

In my heart of hearts I always knew that anything to do with aviation probably attracted a premium, however I have never had it put so blatently in my face as today.

In the post I received the latest catalogue from a well know uk pilot shop, great I thought, a chance to dribble over the latest gadgets that I cannot really justify, but hey we have to dream whilst the weather is too poor to fly don't we.

In the same package came a catologue for the newly launched marine division of the same company. Now I have never really been into things that go on water, but was interested to see what they had to offer. It was then that I noticed what seemed to be a couple of almost identical items in both catalogues, not that surpising I admit, but then I compared the prices;

Aircrew Life Jacket - £79.95
Marine Version - £44.95

Bike in a bag (aviation one) £239.95
Yachtmans Folding Bike £149.99

Ok the aviation version of the bike is not completely identical as it shows it as being 300g heavier, maybe it comes with built in gps for the extra £90 !?!
Sorry, had to get it off my chest and my wife went into glazed over not listening mode as soon as I mentioned flying ;) .

Has anyone come across any other items that carry a heavy premium just because they are aviation related??

Or I guess a more useful question;

What items have you guys and girls found out there that are identical to aviation versions but are cheaper from other sources?

Cheers
Pull Back

I'll get off of my soapbox now!!

Flight bag. Sainsburys placcy bag - free!

SSD

There's an alloy flight case that Transair flogg for £90. I remember seeing the exact same case in Staples the stationers for £30.

Transair will sell you a flourescent jacket for £10, Tchibo will sell you a similar one for £4.

As far as life jackets are concerned, marine jackets are auto-inflation, avaition jackets are manual inflation. The theory being that if you fall off of your boat, the jacket will just inflate on contact with water, but if you ditch your aircraft, water may come into the cockpit before you get out, causing an auto-inflate jacket to blow up. An inflated jacket may prevent you from escaping, hence avaition jackets are manual inflation.

Thank you Pull Back
I've been silent fuming all day - bet that wasn't what the marketing people expected.
Flashy Garmin GPS in colour for your boat, sir?
Certainly, you'll get plenty of change from £500
One for your aeroplane, ooh aeroplane is it?
That'll be well over £800.
What? :confused:
Like something a little cheaper, sir?
Well, our cheapest aviation GPS is just under £260.
Oh boats was it? Well we've got one for £160.
Eh? :uhoh:
Perhaps I'll just have some gloves, then.
Okay, a wide choice for well under twenty quid in the marine section or into aviation for very little change from £30.
Oh, perhaps I'll just have a model, in that case.
Righto chief - boats between £20 and £60, aeroplanes from £100 to £125.
You what? :eek:
Perhaps I'll just take a CD-ROM that shows me how to use the radios.
No problem, boats for £30 or aeroplanes for £70.
:{ :{ :{ :{ :{ :{ :{ :{ :{ :{
Now, I'm not blaming the people who produced the catalogue, their prices merely reflect what they can buy for, I'm sure, but it does all seem to support Pull Back's theory.
There's only one place I've spotted that you can save money between the two magazines.
I'd like to buy some paint for my yacht.
Right you are we've got a dozen products in our catalogue, take your pick.
Thank you and some for my aeroplane.
P!ss off, Biggles, we don't like your type round 'ere.

Bought my first two from same well known company (got my mags today also!) for over £70. Bought two more from a website, can't give the name for advertising reasons, but if you were to type "cheap lifejackets" into google.co.uk you would get a match that is similar! Bu**ger me if the two I bought for less than half the price of the first two weren't identical! It's one of the few times I've felt thoroughly pi55ed of at the way we are exploited occassionally.

I know it's not a cheap past-time, and therefore some people assume we have money to burn, but it's simply not always the case!

DW

The irony is that the boating fraternity think they are being exploited as well! To a certain extent they are too. If industrial suppliers sold life jackets, I am sure they would be even cheaper!

I agree, they are too expensive. I did once buy a few shirts from a certain catalogue but they were 50% more expensive than I can get them elsewhere.

Ever since they keep on sending their catalogue. Rather than waste it completely I took to keeping said aviation catalogue in the loo, but since they upgraded the paper it's too shiny for the purpose intended........ :E

Aircraft tiedown kits are about £40 in the catalogues. You can get them on Ebay for £12. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...MESE%3AIT&rd=1

Hi All,

Looks like I'm not the only one that noticed then!!

The life jacket that I was comparing was a manual inflation one, there seemed to be several choices for the boating people, the one I was using for camparison was a manual one with "harness" whatever that means, if you have one without the harnes its only £39.95. :\ The pictures look identical except for the printing on said lifejacket, must be expensive ink ;)

Does anyone know if you can use car polish / cleaner on aircraft, somthing like autoglym?

Cheers,

Pull Back

Alternative to main suppliers and products
 

I've spent most of my life sailing for a hobby,and I can assure you that that there is a great mark up on Yachting Gear.
I don't have my own boat now but when I did I always looked at the manufacturers details and then sourced elsewhere or used generic parts,especially for Volvo engines!
When we had wooden boats we used an industrial machinery paint that was 25% cost of the International marine stuff and a lot more durable.I think it was made by Croda,and when I asked if it was OK for marine use was told that half the trawler fleet in Scotland used it,so it was OK for me.
It always pays to shop around.
Lister:) :)

High vis vests are the most obvious. As said above £10 ant Transair but between £3 and £5 at any builders merchant. Bloody AVGAS aaaarrrgh.:{

Large Aircrew Soft Case - T/A £49.99
Large Aircrew Soft Case - Argos £19.99

Guess which one I went for !!.

I hate being ripped off, and when flying is so expensive it hurts so much more.

I also cannot see why a piece of plastic that you only need to use for the ATPL exams costs the best part of £80 - how can they justify that. Got mine off ebay for £40.

:mad:

And GPS?
 

In car sat nav prices vs airborne GPS units Why the huge difference? Aviation databases can surely not account for the nearly tenfold price difference.

Its what the market will bear unfortunately.

In the very early days of GPS when I used to sell them as there was some profit in it in those days, the land units that were otherwise identical to the aviation ones were software limited to 100 knots max to prevent them being used in an aviation environment. Above 100 kts the display blanked out. This enabled a 200% price premium to be charged for the aviation version. It cause such a large number of complaints that Garmin removed the software limit.

Some might say Transair have shot themselfs in the foot by putting the boat catalogue in with the aviation catalogue......................... from the tone of the posts above I think that they had the gun selected to full automatic !!

Aircraft tiedown kits are about £40 in the catalogues. You can get them on Ebay for £
 

Be careful with tie-down kits, it's not worth scrimping on cheap imitations.
After suffering a very expensive wing repair on my F172 following an unusually stormy night, I purchased what is advertised as the only Lloyds approved tie-down travel kit for light aircraft. Rather more expensive than the ones in certain aircraft catalogues, but far cheaper then a new wing.

You can buy these from retailers but I went straight to the manufacture. Really helpful people and they can tailor an order to your particular aircraft needs.

http://www.spyra-base.com/

Re lifejackets
The Harness on a marine one fulfils 2 purposes :- 1. To enable you to clip yourself on to a safety line so you don't fall overboard. 2. It's useful to a haul you back on with if you forgot the safety line and ended in the drink. Adds weight and not really necessary for aviation use.
T*%@#air have a "Large Display Digital Timer" for 24.99. Same one with a different label available from RS Components (not generally the cheapest people on the block) at 15.99

Pleeease don't be tempted to use the dog-ties advertised as tie-downs, without first making some mods - the ring attachments are not robust and the triangles at the top are not welded closed, they bend open with sufficient pull. A friend's aeroplane never flew again after being blown upside down when the tie-downs opened up.....
Slip

Taxi Fares!! Whenever I get picked up from an airport and the cabbie asks if I am a pilot and if I flew my own plane in the fares s seem to go onto a 'special' pilots tariff!

LOL!!
Many thanks - this had me giggling!:p

Hmmm.....might even be worth somebodys while creating a web site which attempts to source Transair catalog items in regular high street shops and/or UK-based online retail sites and publishes the results in a searchable database. Prospective purchaser types in Transair stock code, e.g '6851E' which takes you to the relevant page on the Transair site and displays a (cheaper) alternative wherever possible.

Wonder how long it would be before they started sending cease & desist letters? :}

You could, of course, take the charitable option and assume Transair did this to save pilots money by pointing out that we can buy some of our stuff from its marine catalogue...!

Tim

30cm long plastic tube for checking fuel level on a C152: £11.99 from your nearest pilot store.
30cm long piece of wooden dowling (for same): 50p from your nearest hardware shop.
Should I get CAA approval? :)

Dont you just love it when someone comes out with something so obvious you just couldn't see it. "A piece of wooden dowl" what a fantastically simple idea, thanks G SXTY - anyone want a bit of expensive plastic :-)

I'm sure I cannot be the only one, but its amazing the amount of kit you buy because it looked nice and shiny in the catalogue, and you didn't even think of looking for an alternative because you just had to have it !

Well this thread has certainly opened my eyes a lot, the annoying thing is I normally look around on the internet for the better deals on most things (sad I know) but I have a flying bag (yes - I paid a heavy premium on that too :sad: ) full of kit (well some of it) that could have been sourced elsewhere.

Nevermind, I suppose it all pans into insignificance the second your trusty steed fires up and starts guzzling the avgas.

Cheers

Pull Back

Donations gratefully received . . . ;)

The shop that never has a sale!!

And don't buy any of that flight planning cr*p such as 'circuit planners' and all that nonsense. If you can obviously buy it somewhere else then do so (watches, timers, 'comedy items', etc).

Kneeboards spring to mind as another great rip-off. Take a piece of board, and a paper grip, cover with aviation related information such as morse code, and hey presto! up to 30 quid!

How about torches for up to 35 pounds. I got one for 3 pounds from my local petrol station, including batteries. Although it was sh*t mind you and did not last long.

My favourite though has always been the partial panel stickies. These are basically round post it notes, and cost 5 quid for 100.

Most reference materials required for flying can be found for free on the web.

My flying instructor always urged me to buy a stopwatch, and I could never understand why when there was one stuck to my wrist (along with a flight computer, but that's a bit small really). Is there actually any need for a proper stopwatch?

I got my flight bag from an outlet store for £9, my DCs are from the US, so I saved a fair bit on them, haven't done my night rating yet but when I do i've got a maglite at home. The kneeboard was ordered from the States, but that's quite a nice bit of kit - not one of those crappy clipboard and shoelace affairs.

GBM :)

Dead reckoning, but that is a dying art. The sort of thing you do when you start because you have to, then after passing your private you think it's a waste of time and fancy gizmos are the way to go, then if you stay around long enough you realise fancy gizmos are boring so go back to stopwatch again.

Once you start instrument flying in anger it's nice to have a big digital kitchen timer on your yoke. Note I said kitchen timer which you can buy at your local massive hypermarket for a fraction of the price of what you will pay at the airport for a stopwatch.