I agree with DJ, and I think other kitplane makers do too. Recently the designer of the CX4 (an aluminum single-seat design about 10 years old), discovered the cable attachment method on the rudder was causing fatigue cracks in the rudder cables of his prototype. So he redesigned the part and emailed it as a "MANDATORY DESIGN CHANGE" in big letters to all registered builders. Larger kitplane makers like RV make similar improvements in their plans all the time.
According to some KR-Net posts, Neil Bingham's design review talking about the unsafe aft CG limit appeared in Sport Aviation in 1986 and also in the KR Newsletter. Even if Rand-Robinson claimed they never heard of Sport Aviation, they can hardly claim they didn't know about the Newsletter because they occasionally made contributions to it. So if the family of the dead pilot in this tragedy wanted to sue Rand-Robinson, they could say Jeanette Rand found out 27 years earlier that the aft CG limit in the plans was an error that could kill people, but RR never bothered to change the plans or even mention the problem. I'm not saying I'm worried about this. The family probably doesn't want to sue, and if they did they'd have to prove that the original builder didn't vary from the plans in this area, which would be tricky. But if they got a good lawyer, he'd kept telling the jury "twenty-seven YEARS On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 3:10 PM, Dj Merrill via KRnet <krnet at list.krnet.org> wrote: > On 09/25/2014 02:32 PM, Sid Wood via KRnet wrote: > > The principle that will be invoked is: You new something was wrong with > > your design because you made a change. Therefore, you are now admitting > > to some liability and must pay for your mistake(s). > > The flip side to this is that you knew that something was wrong with > your design, and you didn't release an update therefore you were > endangering everyone using your faulty design. Better to own up and > release an update for free rather than take the chance on getting sued > if/when people start getting hurt. > > -Dj > > -- > Dj Merrill - N1JOV - VP EAA Chapter 87 > Sportsman 2+2 Builder #7118 N421DJ - http://deej.net/sportsman/ > Glastar Flyer N866RH - http://deej.net/glastar/ > > _______________________________________________ > Search the KRnet Archives at http://tugantek.com/archmailv2-kr/search. > To UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to KRnet-leave at list.krnet.org > please see other KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html > see http://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet_list.krnet.org to change > options >
