Question about vehicle stats in High-Tech

[awesomenessofme1]

I was looking over the stats for WW1 planes in High-Tech. I've been building some characters for a 1920s setting and I want to give one of them a plane. But I'm wondering about what it would take to convert the stats of them to a civilian version. Primarily the price, but to a lesser extent the weight and possibly speed. Are the weapons counted as part of the planes or would they be counted separately? The flavor text says that a civilian version of the DH-4 was sold for as little as $3000 (about $30k in GURPS $s). Is that a reasonable price?

I can use any answers or advice you have.

[Anaraxes]

There were a great many surplus aircraft after the war, and the governments got rid of them when and how they could. Sometimes they just piled them up and set fire to them. There were a lot of surplus US JN-4s ("Jenny", cost about $5500) sold after the war, sometimes for as little as $50 when brand-new in the crate from the factory. So a surplus price of 10% of the purchase price isn't unreasonable.

Surplus aircraft wouldn't generally be sold with weapons, but weapons laws were different back in the day, and of course vary by country.

I assume the prices in HT are for the model as described, in this case with weapons. You could subtract the cost of the guns before figuring your surplus discount.

The gross weight of a DH-4 was about 3500 pounds (empty about 2400 lbs). So while reducing the weight of a plane certainly does improve its rate of climb and also speed, we're only talking about a couple of percent. So I'm not sure I'd bother in this case.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

The flavor text says that a civilian version of the DH-4 was sold for as little as $3000 (about $30k in GURPS $s).

I'm pretty sure the quoted price of $3,000 is in GURPS $. If your players' characters want to obtain a decommissioned DH-4, they should expect to spend around that much, not $30,000.

[Anaraxes]

The $3000 price is from the HT description, so most likely in GURPSbucks. The list price is $85,000, also presumably GURPSbucks. (GURPS doesn't usually put historical prices in the equipment tables.)

Wikipedia puts the unit cost of an Airco (US-made) DH-4 at $11,250 (which number I saw elsewhere on the web -- but who knows who's copying who?) The BLS CPI gives me about a factor of 16 between 1917 and 2004. Other calculators clock in a little lower, but there's still around a factor of two difference between the inflated Wiki price and the HT number.

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I'm pretty sure the quoted price of $3,000 is in GURPS $. If your players' characters want to obtain a decommissioned DH-4, they should expect to spend around that much, not $30,000.

I thought about that, but the phrasing of it in the book makes it sound like it's just flavor text. It's not entirely clear.

The exact phrasing is "After WWI, many unarmed DH-4s were sold for as little as $3,000." It could be talking about the GURPS $, but it doesn't sound like it to me.

[dcarson]

As popular as the plane was with the Army, the Jenny came into her own after the war. The government sold hundreds of surplus JN-4s, some of them still in their shipping containers, to anyone with $300 (about $4,130 today), says Jeffery S. Underwood, a historian at the United States Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

From https://www.wired.com/2014/08/the-hu...ercial-flight/

So looks like it is GURPS dollars.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

I thought about that, but the phrasing of it in the book makes it sound like it's just flavor text. It's not entirely clear.

The exact phrasing is "After WWI, many unarmed DH-4s were sold for as little as $3,000." It could be talking about the GURPS $, but it doesn't sound like it to me.

It would be remarkably poor form to give a price for something if they didn't intend for PC's to be able to buy it for said price. Additionally, "as little as" implies a huge savings, and being a bit less than half price for a second-hand, demilitarized version doesn't strike me as a huge savings. I'd say the intent was, indeed, that the planes may be available for as low as $3000 GURPS.
EDIT: Ninja'ed, with references

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by dcarson

From https://www.wired.com/2014/08/the-hu...ercial-flight/

So looks like it is GURPS dollars.

Not the same plane. If they were similar enough, you could use the same stats, but the one described there "weighed less than a ton fully loaded", "could hit 75 mph", and "could stay airborne for just over two hours" (so about 150 mi range), while the one in HT weighs over 2 tons fully loaded, can go Move 62 (so about 120 mph), and has a range of 420 mi. Pretty big difference.

I'm not saying it's impossible for them to be using GURPS $ here, but it's just such a huge difference. $85k vs $3k when all they've done is take out ~$15k worth of guns.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

I'm not saying it's impossible for them to be using GURPS $ here, but it's just such a huge difference. $85k vs $3k when all they've done is take out ~$15k worth of guns.

When large numbers of the product have been produced, and demand has just crashed (as for military equipment after the conclusion of one of history's largest wars), fire-sale prices are to be expected.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

Not the same plane.

A JN-4 is not the same plane as a DH-4, certainly. But they were in the same position after the war: the US had a whole bunch of them they didn't want any more. So they got sold off for pretty much whatever they get could. Something like the same price reduction can be expected between the two.

Ridiculously low prices for aircraft were one reason the barnstorming era took off in the US -- all these cheap surplus planes were available, and the government figured getting anything was better than getting nothing by just burning them. The surplus also really helped the US Postal Service expand their airmail trials into a functioning system.