Rob Wolf said:
Where Bill is wrong is where he states --
<<that jet is more than twice as fast as this
Baron, much more reliable, safer, quieter, easier to maintain, easier to fly,
better instrumented and burns less fuel, but it’s not
certified,>>
It may be faster, quieter and more efficient, but it will not be
safer.
This characteristic of the certification process dominates virtually
every element of certified airplane design. Not even the most anal
homebuilder -- and believe me, the Lancair ranks have many of these folks,
including myself at times -- builds their airplanes to that standard across the
board.
Rob, I kinda agree with your comments. I am the President of Systems
3. We make over 5000 aerospace parts every week for Boeing's F18, Apache,
etc. From this background I see three things that make the "safety" issue
less than straight forward. One, for the certified aircraft, the initial
design phase is very controlled and thoroughly tested. This is where some
of the kit aircraft industry is lacking. Two, after certification, design
improvements are not implemented due to a lack of trust between the government
and the private sector. This usually plays out as "to costly to fix".
This can even be flight safety features. The kit industry wins big here.
Third, is the issue of build quality. This is not design
quality. This gets complicated. The certified industry is of great
concern that your process certifications are in order. In twenty years,
only a hand full of times has a government inspector wanted to see the
dimensional characteristics of the parts we build. We have a government
inspector in here twice a week looking at "flight critical" parts. If the paper
work is good, the parts are good. If we were not honorable, we could be selling
junk. Then the parts go to Boeing for assembly. The guy on the
line is having a bad day and the assembly is junk. After 15 years as a
product engineer at General Motors, let me give this advise...Don't buy a car
built during the Christmas Holidays, the assembly is likely to be junk. In
the kit industry, this is builder specific. I have great confidence that my IV-P
will be assembled with greater overall quality than your typical
certified aircraft. I have more at stake than the guy on the line.
So to boil it down, I believe that if the kit plane is well designed, then
it will generally be safer than a certified aircraft. This does not mean
the pilot will fly it more safely.
Craig Berland