Oh, good grief. If you're going to post wildly inaccurate flamage, the least
you could do is put in a paragraph break every now and then.
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 08:33:16AM -0500, roger lambert wrote:
> 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.
It's still yet to be demonstrated that that is teh case in all of the
inflight breakups. It's possible. How possible is anyone's guess.
> 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.
One well-reasoned report is not an "avalanche".
> They demanded the airplane be made safe from "flutter".
At the time, there was a distinct lack of explanations that would account
for the accidents any other way - and especially ones that would account for
why factory-built aircraft were crashing.
> Even after the theory of flutter was refuted, they continued with their
> stream of complaints
What stream of complaints? Discussion on a mailing list is not a complaint
to the authorities, no matter how much you may think it is.
> and many refused to believe any of the studies done by professional
> engineers or even the aviation authorities were correct.
You're on the ZBAG mailing list. You know damned good and well there's no
unanimity there, except in that an answer needed to be found.
> The aviation authorities, in order to stop this activity,
Horse exhaust. The FAA doesn't ground an entire fleet of aircraft to shut up
a few malcontents.
> 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.
I guess you missed the FAA's statement that the original Zodiac XL design
did not meet the ASTM standards.
> Several interesting things happened, including, (1)The complaining group
> claimed victory and patted themselves on the back as having superior
> knowledge to the others.
What do you call the FAA's statement that the Zodiac's design was deficient,
then? The FAA, ever mindful of litigation, would not say that if they did
not sincerely believe it.
> They forgot their claims of design flaw were never shown as correct by any
> engineering study
Tell that to the FAA.
> and ignored every indication of the aviation authorities that operational
> activities may have contributed to the crashes.
Right. A 79-year-old man taking his wife up for her first flight in his new,
factry-built Zodiac is going to push the edges of the envelope.
> As none of this group actually had a flying airplane(most don't even have
> a pilot's license),
Read my .signature. My airplane has around 210 hours on the Hobbs. It's
flown all over the central US. I've had a pilot's license for 20 years. Yes,
I'm a member of the group you insist on hating and blaming for the
grounding, instead of the Zodiac's design.
> they suffered no real damage,
I've got an airplane I can't afford any more (due to extended unemployment),
can't fly, and can't sell. How, exactly, have I "suffered no real damage"?
> and have further reason to put off ever having to fly their airplane.
I flew my airplane the day of the grounding, before I learned of it. I would
love to be able to fly it again. That's probably not oign to happen in the
absence of a miracle.
> (2) The designers, who may or may not survive economically, are bombarded
> by demands they pay for these "improvements"
I have not made, and will not make, such a demand.
> by owners so shortsighted they couldn't pass a flight physical without
> wearing binoculars backwards,
I agree that demands that Zenith/Zenair/AMD pay for the modifications are
shortsighted.
> will now be able to attribute every crash to builder/pilot error.
Once the deficient design is corrected - and, no matter how loudly you howl
and scream and punf feet and fists on the floor like a two-year-old, the FAA
says that the design is deficient - then the aircraft should have its
accident rate fall to about the same as the rest of the LSA fleet, unlike
what it has been. This is the inconvenient fact you keep ignoring.
> (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.
When I bought my AMD, I didn't expect to get out of it anything approaching
what I paid for it. That didn't bother me. If I were still making my
previous salary, it wouldn't bother me now. I bought it to fly for the rest
of my flying days. I'd love to simply fly it to Eastman (with a ferry
permit), write AMD a check, and fly home a couple of weeks later with an
airplane whose design has been thoroughly examined, tested, characterized,
and understood - far better than any other LSA flying.
> (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.
Would you rather fly a design the FAA has found deficient, or would you
rather remove all doubt?
> Steven Speilberg couldn't film one better than this.
I commend Tom Clancy's words to you before you write your next fairy tale.
Clancy observed that he couldn't get away with writing things that have
really happened, because fiction has to be believable. Your fairy tale is a
deliberate distoryion of reality, to the point of not being believable any
more.
--
Jay Maynard, K5ZC, PP-ASEL, CFI-SP http://www.conmicro.com
http://jmaynard.livejournal.com http://www.tronguy.net
Fairmont, MN (KFRM) (Yes, that's me!)
AMD Zodiac CH601XLi N55ZC http://www.tronguy.net/N55ZC.shtml
