Diana-2 VH-VHZ, Reasons forDelivery Delays

Reasons for delivery delay VH-VHZ
http://www.segelflug.de/cgi-bin/wwwt...vc=1#Post68970


What Hana and Lada told me in Tocumwal Australia.

Hana Zejdova ordered her Diana-2 with the goal to fly records in Australia
as she had successfully done before with Diana-1.
She signed the sales contract in August, when the first serial Diana stood
nearly finished in the Polish factory (for the US dealer, first flight
04/11/2005).
The delivery for Hana's second serial Diana was promised for March 2006.
This would have allowed small delays and enough time for Hana to fly and
prepare her plane properly for Australia.

When Hana returned to Europe after the Australian Soaring season 2005/2006,
she expected her plane to be nearly finished.
But when she arrived at the factory she was told that the nearly finished
Diana-2 there will go to the US and that she will get serial number 3.
That was a blow.

Due to Polish legislation, a plane without call sign can only be flown by
the test pilot.
That's why Hana was prepared to pay additionally for the Polish registration
and to get a Polish gliders license. But she wanted to wait towards the end
of the manufacturing process to do it.
More disturbing was now that Bogumil had given her address to other pilots,
who called her asking, if she would rent out her glider during summer 2006
(Finland).
That was out of question, because she wanted to become comfortable with the
glider herself, before leaving to Australia.

Hana was promised that her glider would be finished end of May, then June,
July, August, September....... she nearly cancelled the contract.
But then it looked promising and she ordered the container, only to find out
that there was another delay.

Finally that caused incredible hectic - and maybe quality checks were rushed
in the process.
But Hana and Lada still were convinced, that their good friend Beres and his
team would deliver a perfect plane.
I watched the Zejdova team in Tocumwal waiting hopefully and with lots of
confidence for the container to arrive.

What happened then was a complete loss of thrust into the product in several
steps: First the unexplainable lack of cooperation and help of the
manufacturer.
The end result was loss of time, loss of money and finally the loss of her
sponsor. Hana Zejdova had a promising contract with the sponsor for the
future, but the disaster with the Diana-2 did not allow her to fulfill the
promises! She is asking herself now - who will now pay for all this?

Nobody wants to demonize the glider Diana-2.
Many of the applied ideas are genius.

But all new designs can have small problems which may show a bit later.
This is normal - pilots can live with it as long as the manufacturer helps
and corrects the problems.

Personally I have learned to accept the limits of my own engineering work
and to admit them. Nobody makes no mistakes.
You ask your customers that small problems can happen and to report them, so
they can be corrected.
By doing so you gain customer thrust and it reduces your personal stress
level.

It seems as if the designer of the Diana classifies critics as personal
attacks.
This is unfortunate for the customer, is endangering the designers health
with unnecessary stress and is bad publicity for the manufacturer.

Chris