John Farrington's insight

[lurch]

Makes perfect sense.  I own a harley-Davidson motorcycle, and I see the same
thing...if I need a set of breaker points I can pay $3 at the auto-parts
store for '63 Buick points or $12 at the bike shop...and I won't waste the
bandwidth listing 23 other parts off the top of my head that cross-reference
to some car [and cost a third as much purchased as such rather than as bike
parts].

Ever look inside a PC?  Many PC manufacturers have taken to welding the
power-supply cage shut so the terminally stupid can't get their fingers
across 110VAC...part of my job as an engineer is to spec power supplies for
my client's products...after I cut them open so we can test 'em...I shudder
to think what sort fo field day some shyster would have if their client got
zapped building a tube-based kit...

73 de ka9egw

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Heathkit Owners and Collectors List
> [mailto:HEATH at LISTSERV.TEMPE.GOV]On Behalf Of John Farrington
> Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2000 1:31 AM
> To: HEATH at LISTSERV.TEMPE.GOV
> Subject: Re: unscientific poll
>
>
> 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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