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kits be built by the plans as true Glass Gooses, and if not insist that it not be registered as such? I really do want to hear from you. You have an investment in this program.
There are ways that individuals can express their individuality and have plenty of FUN with their projects. Instrument panels are always an individual thing. The paint scheme is definitely personal and can involve a lot of bragging rights. The quality of the workmanship, especially the finish work on a plane will always be a source of pride. It really doesn’t matter if you reengineer the nose gear and it works great, if the plane looks like someone finished it with a concrete trowel, that’s all people will see or care about? The cockpit area is also an area where there is opportunity for individual taste and excellence. The engine installation and the professionalism can show off a person’s high standards or in some cases be embarrassing.

PLANS AND PARTS
As I have written this newsletter, I have been ever conscious of the fact that when I state that the plane must be built by the plans, that there are going to be a lot of people that are going to jerk back and say how can he say that when we haven’t had all the plans?

I know better than anyone that the plans aren’t yet finished, although tremendous progress has been made recently and the end is actually in sight. I have been reminded often enough believe me. Never forget that your reason for wanting the plans is to finish your one project and that is a very good reason. But MY reasons for wanting you to have the plans are many and much larger in scale.

First, I want my business to succeed and to recoup my investment. That won’t happen until a bunch of you guys are flying safe dependable

 aircraft. So I have a LOT more incentive to get these plans out than you have to want them. Secondly, I want you all off my back!! I could have thrown out some sloppy half baked plans that left you all to figure out half of what you had to do and then spent the rest of my life on the phone with all of you trying to explain everything and not getting anything else done. You would have been frustrated, I would have wasted my time putting out the bad plans and you would waste time trying to do the work by them. I KNOW! I built a Seahawk by those kinds of plans. It was maddening. It took 4 times as long and cost a lot more money than it would have with good plans.

One of the reasons that everyone is wanting more plans is that the new plans make it so much more simple and fast to do the work. In the past, the work would have gone so slow that more plans wouldn’t have seemed like such a big deal.

Back to my build it by the plans problem. The biggest problem I have with that is that even when a builder has obtained old Seahawk plans and proceeded using those, frequently they have deviated even from those plans. Then even worse, when they actually had new Glass Goose plans, things were modified even from those! There is also the problem that there are 2 different versions of the Seahawk plans. One of those should be burned, and the other only kept for historical reasons. Neither should be used to build from.

All this time, my focus has been to get you the RIGHT plans. Not something that might hurt you and not something that later I would have to express my regrets for not getting right and causing you to have to do extra work. The folks that are working with the new plans,( and we have some professionals that have worked with a lot of plans),
GLASS GOOSE GAZETTE * ISSUE #17, June 15, 2000
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