Why I'll never build a kit plane.]

This was not a kit. It's a Rutan moldless composite design built from plans. The design has many successful examples flying today, probably hundreds. Wait until all the evidence is in before you draw your conclusions.

I agree that the death is tragic. We had a wonderful aircraft builder, an ophthalmologist, killed here several years ago when he flew his Moni for the first time. His wife and children were also watching. Oh, it was a sad day of grief! But, you know, that young doctor had flown a Rutan-designed aircraft for a number of happy years before the catastrophe which took his life.

Don't jump to rash conclusions.
"Jim Willson" wrote in message news:3f1e93b4$1@ham...
Even though I'd be quite capable of doing it, I'll never build a kit airplane. Call me a wimp, but I've assembled too many bicycles on Christmas morning to think that I could be 100% correct in building an airplane. And for what?! A thrill. The pride to say, "Look what I did!" I wonder what the kids will say about their daddy. I'm sure he spent hours at the hanger instead of with them. Perhaps they sat at the hanger watching him asking him annoying questions so that they could at least get his attention. I'm sure he made many promises to spend more time with them when the plane was finished.

We spend so many hours of our lives chasing after the temporal things of this world, (i.e. hobbies, work, a name, a reputation). We never spend time chasing after the things that will count when we're gone (the character of our family) or those things eternal.

I grieve for this family. What a waste!

R/
Jim

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Engineer Killed in Small Plane Crash
TEHACHAPI, Calif. (AP) - An aerospace engineer was killed when a kit airplane he had spent years building crashed during takeoff on its maiden flight.
The single-engine plane piloted by David Robert Thompson (http://www.scaled.com), 38, fell back onto the runway and burst into flames Sunday at Mountain Valley Airport, about 70 miles north of Los Angeles.
His wife and two children were among the witnesses.
``His family was there, videotaping,'' said coroner Kelly Cowan. ``It was supposed to be a celebration.''
The cause of the crash was not known.
Thompson was in charge of developing a rocket motor for a private manned spaceship program that aims to some day launch a three-seat spaceship on suborbital flights.
He worked for the aerospace company founded by Burt Rutan, who designed the only aircraft to fly around the world nonstop without refueling.
Rutan said Monday that Thompson was flying a Q2, a kit plane marketed in the 1980s by a company that is no longer in business. He said Thompson ``was very private'' about the plane and did not tell co-workers about the flight.