Made me Laugh. Thanks.
E.
Do not archive
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 8:33 AM, roger lambert <n601ap@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
> =
>
>
