Just my two cents on the following advice you have received in the past few
days --

<<my humble suggestion is you give Vern in the parts dept. a gold watch.>>

Hell, give him a gold ingot!  

Vern is the person I most interface with at Lancair.  He exemplifies
outstanding customer support.  His attitude, competence, and responsiveness
are why I send most of my "airplane parts" dollars to Lancair instead of
Aircraft Spruce.  Vern wants to improve customer service by updating the
parts catalog and ofering on-line catalogs.  More than once I heard thru the
grapevine that this-or-that was available from Vern.  It sure would be nice
to have a parts catalog update!

<<You also have a ready source of builders that would be willing (anxious) to
assist with the development of not only improved manual(s), but also some
factory approved (reviewed and edited) "how I do it" segments. It could be
with accompanying drawings, photos or even mpegs.>>

This is a GREAT idea.  If you could take our ideas and sketches, use our
words, have one of your tech reps review it to make sure it's safe, have your
artist draw a decent sketch if we haven't already provided one, and post it
on your website in a "builder tips" section, I think you'd have a winner.

Your builder support guys are great, but they are overworked.  If I could
read a "how to do it" builder tip rather than yank Mark Mahnke out of the
shop to answer some question for the 500th time, we'd both benefit.

<<Regarding the manual, the existence of so many flying airplanes is proof
that the manual is just fine the way it is. Few love it, but it gets the job
done.>>

Bullshit.  (Sorry, Brent!)  The fact that your builder support lines are
always ringing is proof that the manual is incomplete.  Your staff deserves
great praise for answering all of our questions cheerfully and helpfully, but
I gotta believe that they can be updated.  I have seen later manuals (the
Legacy manual) and they are giant leaps forward from the earlier ones.  I
admit it's hard to justify spending scarce dollars on updating a manual for
an airplane you haven't even sold for 4 years (Brent is right on this score)
but my frustration level would go way down with updated information.  Maybe
the best solution is what was listed above.  I dunno.  Brent had some
interesting suggestions, too.  Maybe the builder support guys already know
how to make their jobs easier but haven't been able to do it yet.  Ask them
of you haven't already.

- Rob Wolf
360 SFB Mk II 51%