Ron,

I got your PM. Thank you for writing it! I am going to post it here, along with my reply.


RonStahl's PM:

Shaun,
I was disapointed that my kit was not complete when I recieved it, and this was not the first time that I was missing things from a Yellow kit. Because of this shortage I was not able to take advantage of the vaction I had scheduled every year during the winter to build. I was missing the wing tips, turkey feather rods, but more importantly the plans and instruction book. After a call back to the shop where I got the kit from, they were sorry about the missing items, and they would get me the missing parts asap. When I got the call that my parts where in I was then told that they found out some early kits were shipped without those items , they were sorry that the kit was missing these items but that Yellow knew about it and sent the kits out anyway, and now they had to track down the other guys who got kits as well. I feel that Yellow put dealers in a bad spot as not everyone would be as understanding as I was and I am sure that some poor guy has a kit somewhere without these parts, they will never open it and will someday sell it as a NIB kit and the new owner will get it and it will be missing these parts and then has no choice but to try and get them from Yellow. It was just a bad deal all around for all of the customers who wanted to get started right away and were delayed starting their projects. No company is perfect and I think that your letter of concern is a step toward where Yellow needs to go to stay on my list of compaines that I will do business with. I have several Yellow Kits, A-4, both F-18's, F-16, Starfire, and now the F-15 and find them all to be nice kits but surley not at the level of BVM. Just compare the two companies instruction manuals and you will see what I mean if you haven't done so already. I accept that the lower price of the Yellow product means that I will be doing more enginerring of how systems go in and work, but I do expect {as I think anyone should} that my kit will be complete when I recieve it. Thank you for your letter of concern.
Ron Stahl

My reply:

Ron,

Thank you very much for taking the time to write that reply. I often get 'complaints' sent my way. Some of those have merit, and others do not. I think, though, that anytime someone takes the time to sit down and write it out, then it deserves attention.

Here's some information that you might find mitigating. When the F-15 kits first came out, a decision was made by some of the people who get to be involved in such decisions (myself included) to offer a pre-release version of the kit to those who wanted one. The case was that there were some parts not yet available, but nothing that should stop a builder from 'knocking a dent' into the project. The caveat was that anyone who requested such a kit did so with the understanding that they would NOT call every day and pester us with questions (like, "Okay, I glued this to that--what next?" ) and that they would patiently wait for us to ship them the rest of the parts. Many agreed wholeheartedly, and some elected to wait. If you do a search, you'll discover that this situation was announced long before any kit was ever sent out. There were multiple threads, some initiated by me, about what was available immediately, and what was forthcoming. I even recall a thread that had to do with pre-instructions building tips. What does all this mean? It means that we didn't screw the dealers. I'm not sure who the dealer was that supplied your kit, but I assure you that every one of those incomplete kits went out to someone who was duly informed. Now, this doesn't mean that an occasional screwup doesn't occur. It occurs with everyone, including BVM, whose products I have used for years.

Regarding quality, I agree that BVM is superb. I think it's more hype, however, that his products are two or three times better than the rest. You mention reengineering. I have always felt that that was a word quite misapplied to what we're doing to these kits. For example: On the F-15, is there anything at all that doesn't work if done completely stock? No. Are there things that I changed because I felt I had a better idea than the guy who wrote the instruction manual? Yes. Does that mean I engineered something? Hardly. I changed the position of a door cylinder, rearranged the items on the tray, etc. None of that is 'engineering' and all of it is standard modelling.

If BVM did our plans and instructions for us, then endorsed the kit as "Good", would the kit be worth 3k to me? Not at all. There was an idea early on to use composite wings, laminate bulkheads, and pre-installed formers on this kit. The pricetag would have gone up to the 2.5k area. We felt that since most of those features are completely unnecessary and just 'fancy', then why make the kit inaccessable to that many people? It's just a philosophy, I guess.

I am sorry you didn't get your parts when you got your kit. I'm sorry you've been thinking this whole time that we carelessly threw the kits out there like that. Some people think we shouldn't have made those partial kits available. I, in the end, agreed. I just thought I'd tell you our side of the story.

Thanks again for taking the time.

Shaun