Hi,

I am considering to build an S7 STi, but I honestly was discouraged by the value of a Kitfox on the second hand market (in Europe!).

Based on my research I see that S1s remain well under 12.000 USD. S2s are under 16.000 USD and S3 under 28.000 USD, while S4 are only a fraction more than the S3.
I know it strongly depends on the logged time, quality, etc, but they all looked around 400-600 hours which is not that "old" in my opinion.

My feeling is that people (in Europe) see the Kitfox as an ultralight rather than an LSA. Especially France is in that case. There you tend to find them in the ultralight community for some reason. But also all of my friends seems to have the perception that it are ultralights... This is of course completely wrong as an ultralight as a MTOW around 992 lbs in Europe. This might change as manufacturers are pushing EASA to 1300 lbs. The Kitfox is an LSA at the moment, that is a fact, but the community feel different apparently.
My concern is that if you invest like 70.000 USD in an S7 STi and get only half (or maybe less) of the new value in return, then it is rather disappointing... I know we don't built aircraft to resell, at least I don't, but I am a bit shocked... at some point we are selling our aircraft, don't we.

Second I notice that the factory is giving 1000 hours or 18 month as average build time. Even 200 less with quick build wings. Looking at the builder log websites, this looks VERY optimistic. What are realistic build times?

Thank you!