Return-Path: Received: from marvkaye.olsusa.com ([205.245.9.200]) by truman.olsusa.com (Post.Office MTA v3.1.2 release (PO203-101c) ID# 0-44819U2500L250S0) with SMTP id AAA24684 for ; Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:55:27 -0500 Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19981203095550.02d0ef4c@olsusa.com> Date: Thu, 03 Dec 1998 09:55:50 -0500 To: lancair.list@olsusa.com From: "Dick C. Blumenstein" (by way of Marvin Kaye ) Subject: Manuals X-Mailing-List: lancair.list@olsusa.com Mime-Version: 1.0 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<--->>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> << Lancair Builders' Mail List >> <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<--->>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >> You know, for years (every year since '83) I have been going to Oshkosh and have always wanted to build a plane. I'm trying to rearrange my life soon to make the time. Being an engineer and a pilot I thought I would enjoy the challenge of doing it. However, frankly, after monitoring the e-mails back and forth for months now, I'm not so eager to jump in. I'm a little appalled at the "apparent" lack of either sufficient instructions on how to do something or the lack of good systems design for some sub-systems from Lancair. I had always assumed that in those thick assembly manuals there were enough details to properly build a plane..... naive me! Between the comments by some that they have never seen change pages to the manuals even though Lancair had their correct address and that they have been sending in "fixes" over a long period of building to apparently poor design of some sub-systems (recently, brakes for example?), I'm rather hesitant to jump right in. This really is an "experimental" plane!! I'm not looking to have to make any big design decisions and have to redesign some subsystems (by the way, my hat is off to Brent and others in this regard). I'm looking for a manual that tells me the exact and best way to build one... completely..soup to nuts (even though I have Tony Bingelis' and other construction technique books). Of course, the definition of "best way" is debatable. I realize that there will always be those people who want to enhance any design, and that's OK; but there seems to be some lack of confidence in some existing subsystems as defined by the manuals. What I haven't gleaned is whether the documentation and manuals have improved so that newer aircraft such as the ES have far superior instructions to older models. Any comments would be appreciated. Dick Blumenstein (h) rcblumenstein@sysdyne.com (w) above e-mail address.