David,

I haven't read your articles yet but I do have one question. If BVM sent you a letter directly, not published anywhere, why did you feel the need to come here and put this to public scrutiny?

I have the latest RCJI in my car however and will give the articles a good read this morning and let you know my impressions.

Followup:

Having read through Gas Flow, the WJM report, and the Vigilante review I can offer up these impressions..

Gas Flow:
You and I have had conversation before about the Bobcat elevator effectiveness. I disagree with your conclusions about the JR DS3301 not being suitable for the elevators as pure torque ratings are not the entire issue here. The control geometry of the Bobcat's elevator linkage gives more leverage applied to the surface than the simple torque rating for the servo. Your comments about using 6v power is right on the money though. Anytime you deal with long servo leads, especially with multiple connectors involved, going to the higher voltage ensures you get at least sufficient voltage at the servo.

I think the issue here is the possibility that people will take your statements as fact outright, and infer that BVM was negligent in his design work. While there have been some issues with a few people regarding elevator effectiveness, there have been WAY too many people without issue and far too many other variables to lay blame on BVM. Things like quality of building, substandard electronics used, etc. The only person I can be SURE there was none of this was Terry Nitsch, but I believe his crash was a result of high temp, high density altitude, high speed, and simply insufficient altitude to complete the maneuver resulting in CFIT (controlled flight into terrain).

World Jet Masters
While I don't see anything intended to attack BVM here, the way you stated the problems was basically unneccessary in my opinion. You could have simply stated you were delayed in making the repairs to your F-4 and left it at that.

MAS Vigilante Review
Again I see nothing directly attacking BVM per se, but you make several comments about the Vigilante in comparison to the BVM Bandit. To me this seems reasonable as the BVM Bandit is the king of the high performance sport jets, and you DO need a watermark to compare products and give any sort of relevance. It's hard to make a full comparison of the two kits however since one is all composite, and the other has foam flying surfaces. So the cost comparison isn't really relevant to me.

Overall.. I think your writing wasn't INTENTIONALLY attacking BVM, but your choice of words and so forth could have been different. I also haven't seen the email sent to you so I'm sort of replying in the dark a bit.