A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away the aviation authorities
decided they needed to get a large number of older aircraft out of the fleet
and, at the same time, allow more people to fly in a low, slow unregulated
airspace. To that end they issued a set of specifications and requested
engineers to design aircraft to those specifications. The engineers made
several assumptions, i.e. the builders would follow the plans, the pilots
would operate the airplane within the flight envelope, and the owners would
properly maintain the aircraft. The engineers designed the aircraft to the
government specs and released the plans and kits to the market.
Unfortunately, the engineers were wrong in their assumptions about some of
the builders, owners and pilots. Some builders,many of whom were not
engineers and had no building experience felt they knew"better" than the
designer and made "improvements" to the design or built poorly with hardware
store tools and equipment. Some owners did not maintain the aircraft
according to factory specifications. Some pilots "self checked" the
modifications, flew aerobatics and exceeded Va and Vne with reckless
abandon. Crashes insued. A group of builders then engaged in a campaign to
force a redesign of the airplane by an avalanche of complaints to the
aviation authorities. They demanded the airplane be made safe from
"flutter". Even after the theory of flutter was refuted, they continued with
their stream of complaints and many refused to believe any of the studies
done by professional engineers or even the aviation authorities were
correct. The aviation authorities, in order to stop this activity, engaged
the designers of the airplane to strengthen the airplane so the pilots would
have less opportunity to harm themselves by their excursions outside the
flight envelope in their self designed "improvements" to the airplane. The
designers, tired of going to crash sites, and tired of seeing how poorly
built, flown and maintained their aircraft were, designed modifications that
made the airplane far stronger than the original specifications. Several
interesting things happened, including, (1)The complaining group claimed
victory and patted themselves on the back as having superior knowledge to
the others. They forgot their claims of design flaw were never shown as
correct by any engineering study and ignored every indication of the
aviation authorities that operational activities may have contributed to the
crashes. As none of this group actually had a flying airplane(most don't
even have a pilot's license), they suffered no real damage, and have further
reason to put off ever having to fly their airplane.(2) The designers, who
may or may not survive economically, are bombarded by demands they pay for
these "improvements" by owners so shortsighted they couldn't pass a flight
physical without wearing binoculars backwards, will now be able to attribute
every crash to builder/pilot error.(3) The factory built airplanes will now
have an additional bill for the "improvements" to an airplane which is
already upside down financially and may never recover any commercial
ability.(4) The rest, including those with hundreds of hours on the
airframe, who built appropriately and flew the airplane within its flight
envelope will also have to dissassemble their airplane to incorporate the
"improvements" or face potential problems with the aviation authorities or
the insurance companies, much less any attempted resale of the airplane.
Steven Speilberg couldn't film one better than this.
