We heard at Sun & Fun that Avemco would no longer insure a Glass Goose!?! When I heard about that I went straight to the Avemco people and asked them what was up? They said there was no truth to the rumor whatsoever and that the Glass Goose was no problem for them to insure. I talked to the Vice President of Underwriting himself so I believe my information is very valid.

As an owner of a Glass Goose kit, I would ask you. Do you want a bunch of other Glass Goose builders to modify their projects and then go out and find out they have poor performing aircraft or even worse dangerous aircraft? Every nose gear that fails on landing that didn’t have to because it was redesigned is a blemish on the Glass Goose program and on your plane. No one will blame the individual builder’s modification, they will just see Glass Goose on the incident or accident report and that will be a reflection on your plane whether justified or not.

There isn’t much I can do to change the fact that the Glass Goose is a very unique design that is easily recognized. Even if an individual builder modifies his project and calls it something else,

As the owner of this program, I have much more at stake than you as individual builders. Toni and I have many years and many dollars and many sleepless nights and a few bruises invested in this program and we own 2 of these aircraft. We would like to recoup at least some of our investment in the future and the only way we can do that is with a healthy program and a lot of you guys flying safe unmodified true Glass Gooses. So as you can readily see, we have every reason to insist that the planes be built the way they are proven to be safe. The first of our kits to be built burned up before it ever got in the air. The owner and I had very heated arguments over the way he had plumbed the fuel system. He would not change the system. The second of our kits to get in the air had the problem of not being able to extend it’s nose gear after retraction and had to make a belly landing on the first flight. Again, I had multiple and heated discussions with the owner prior to that flight concerning the nose gear and how he had modified it. Again, I was ignored. I was so sure that gear was going to have trouble that I made a special point of laying out exactly how to make a belly landing to that owner before I left the area.

Here are 2 clear examples of why this modification thing is so important and why I am spending so much time on it. If this keeps up, the Glass Goose program will have an up hill struggle to say the least. I would like to hear from you as members of this program. Do you want me to take an aggressive stance on this matter and insist that our