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%