Since I seem to have touched a few tender spots with my earlier reply to
Ferg, a few more comments are in order, and I especially want to apologize
for the offence taken from my comments regarding automobiles manufactured in
UK.
Autos first. The only surviving UK based marque in the US market is Jaguar
(and for now I'll overlook who actually owns Jag - they were fine as a UK
company) and we have Sir John Egan to thank for that (among other things he
made some rather strong threats to Lucas, Lord of Darkness, that improved
the quality of their electrics dramatically). OK, there are a few other low
volume specialty manufacturers like Rolls (did you know that if your
automatic transmission fails in the first year that the approximately
US$7,000 replacement cost is not covered under warranty? No, not my Rolls,
the only car I've ever owned from UK was a Lotus Elan - or did it own me?)
but those are custom made, not assembly line items. The US market is a
tough one and the French and Italian (and never mind the Yugoslavians - the
Yugo was a sick joke) automakers have failed here for the same reason as the
British: their cars were unreliable even compared to the (at the time) truly
mediocre local products. Having owned at least one car from the US, UK,
Italy, Germany, and Japan, I have for the last 20 years been driving the
ones from Japan (well, sort of; our current Honda Accord is assembled in
Ohio). I have not bought a US made (by a US company) vehicle since 1964;
having more recently driven a few US made cars provided by an employer has
convinced me that the guys in Detroit are still lagging the Germans and
Japanese in both design and build quality. I am not blind to the faults of
the locally made stuff.
My comments about British cars were based on the reality that the
competitive market decided their fate, and were not intended as an attack on
all things British. Based on the manufacturing quality of my kit, I think
that the comparison with certain autos is valid. In fairness to Europa, I
do not question the design of the aircraft. I considered it superior when I
bought the kit and I still do.
Perhaps I am somewhat naive, never having built an airplane before, but I
expected Europa to perform the "final inspection" of the goods prior to
shipment and not have the customer find so many mistakes. It seems to me
that most of the problems with my kit could have been eliminated had Europa
considered how changes in one component affect mating components. This is
especially obvious in the XS wings where the aileron and flap cores were cut
too short (I suspect the lengths were correct for the Classic wing) leaving
two fairly large spanwise gaps along the wing, and the location of the flap
hinges on the flap and the wing are so far off that two of the three hinges
required rather severe S bends, the mass balance boxes are badly aligned
with the mass balance arms, and the hard points in the fuselage and the
corresponding pins in the wing root barely intersect when installed
according to the instruction manual. Perhaps the folks at Lancair are not
very good at this either, and apparently even Cessna doesn't get it right
all the time, but that doesn't make me any less frustrated.
For those who think that the bean counters let the engineering and
manufacturing guys run the company on this side of the Atlantic I say: all
too often this is not so. We have an excellent example in Chrysler (before
Daimler and before Iacocca, a marketing guy) having been run (into the
ground) by the accountants. After not one but two (!) bankruptcies the
accountants have been put in their proper place and the company is at least
surviving (sort of). The basic corporate mentality in the US is, with too
few exceptions, to make decisions based on their effect in the present
month, or quarter, regardless of the longer term consequences, thus keeping
the Wall Street crowd happy (and when things get bad those clowns dump the
stock while the employees go to work elsewhere).
While economics undoubtedly influenced the decision to build the Liberty in
the US, manufacturing expertise must also have been a significant factor,
and I give credit to Liberty management for contracting manufacture to a
company with the requisite expertise.
Best regards,
Rob Housman
A070
-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of Fergus Kyle
Sent: Monday, October 23, 2000 6:11 AM
Subject: CANOES & TOPS
Cheers to all:
To Klaus, Miles, Bob, Graham, Keith, Carl, Erich and all others
who answered my query - Thank you. I had no idea the topic would take
on a flavour of its own. For the plethora of facts and tips I am much
obliged. One gets a sense of Group Character from it, much to be
compared to other nets which have not nearly such warm triats.
Again - Thanks - and will not close the topic till all corners
heard from!
Ferg
#A064
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