unscientific poll

[John Farrington]

At 09:59 AM 10/03/2000, Bill Coleman, AA4LR wrote in response to
comments about resurrecting Heathkit:

> > The time and era of Heathkit has passed. The time
> > and era of building kits has also passed.
>
>This may be true of electronics, but not of other things.
>Kit aircraft are a booming industry.


Aside from changing technology, can kits for aircraft or electronics
or anything continue to exist for long in our legal climate? The
mention of light aircraft kits brings this memory to mind:

The U.S. used to be a world leader in factory-built light aircraft,
but that mostly stopped, the story goes, because some years ago on a
stormy night a drunken private pilot went up in his small airplane
and killed himself in weather that he wasn't qualified for even when
sober. Then his wife got a lawyer to sue the aircraft manufacturer,
using the lame ploy that they were responsible for making light
aircraft so safe that even falling-down-drunk incompetent amateur
pilots couldn't hurt themselves in them at night during storms. The
lawyer convinced a jury of off-the-street aviation ignoramuses, and
got a big award for the wife. Not long after that the price for a
$45,000 light aircraft jumped to near $250,000 because of product
liability insurance. And not long after that, most U.S. manufacturers
quit making small single-engine aircraft (these example prices are no
exaggeration - large insurance premiums had to be spread over the
small number of manufactured planes; I know of one model that had
that much of a price increase over a relatively short time).
Recently I heard that Cessna was thinking of again making a popular
model that used to cost $15-20,000, but the new price was estimated
to be at least $120,000.

Now, can you picture some kid with an electronic kit pricking his
finger on a resistor lead, or burning himself with a soldering iron,
and then his mother sues the kit maker for all kinds of medical
treatment, irreversable psychological damage, pain and suffering,
physical and psychiatric therapy, etc.? Ridiculous? Not in this era.
Have you ever watched parents fight over minor incidents in Little
League games?

Technology may not be as simple as it used to be, but neither is
the U.S. the place of reasonable laws that it used to be.

Let us pray....

73

KE5ZB

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