Hey I resemble that remark. By now many of you may have viewed my
fancy dream machine at:

http://inline_twin.tripod.com/concept.html

And you're pointing out something I've seen a few times here in RAH
and maybe we need a rec.aviation.experimental

Some people want to push the boundaries, even if its only in their own
heads, and try to do something new or better than before. And other
people are happy building what someone else designed, and thats great.
It takes all kinds. There's enough drilling, clecoeing, sanding,
layingup, painting to keep anyone busy, but hopefully you don't spend
so much time on the grunt work that you miss the opportunity to
invent.

Personally I get depressed at the thought of investing years of grunt
labor to end up with an airplane with similar numbers to a Cessna 150.
(Ya, but its MY sheet metal bending skills that made that spam can).
You can have a great time learning how to work various materials, each
one for the first time, and when you pass on, nobody will ever know
that you once got really good at fiberglassing so you could solve that
really tough fairing problem that each and every other builder of that
kit also had to solve. Or you figured out this trick so you could
make a bracket that supported a control rod. I figure people have
already done that before, so its not what interests me.

Someone once asked Edison "What good is an idea by itself?" to which
he responded "What good is a baby?" Its the potential that can become
of it.

So we need to have skilled technicians that can roll sheet, and paint
a smooth coating, but we also need people to concentrate on the
physics and try to really understand the phenomenon that are at work
over that rolled sheet and paint, to push the envelope, "to infinity
and beyond..."

And oh ya, thousands of hours of crop duster time spraying poisonous
chemicals on turnips doesn't make someone an expert in anything except
applying pesticide to crops using an airplane. When I have a question
about that topic I'll keep that persons name in mind.