I entirely and absolutely agree, particularly your last sentence, but what ARE the design limits (have any been established) and how do we know when we are approaching or exceeding them? That is the dilemma. What I do say is that we can very easily improve, strengthen, our control systems and make them less, perhaps much less prone to flutter or failure, (but not immune), at very little weight or financial penalty, thereby further reducing, but by no means eliminating, the risk of failure of the control system in typical use.

Certainly, if I had a Viper (or any other type) and I had heard of more than one or two incidents of flutter (as I believe there have been, just as there were several BoBcat pilots who suffered pitch control problems) I would take all reasonable precautions to avoid a recurrence in my machine. The first step is to look at the specification of the servo used on that control surface and the associated linkage. That is exactly what I did when I heard of the BobCat problems two or three years ago and many pilots have spoken to me or emailed me and said they have done the same and have had absolutely no recurrence or similar symptoms of the problem in their BoBcats, a very fine flying machine, two of which continue to give me and many others superb service.

Regards, David Gladwin.