Kitplanes December

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 17:50:02 -0500, "TaxSrv"
wrote:

"Jim Weir" wrote:
Fifteen years ago they had an avionics writer that didn't
know which end of the soldering iron got hot.
....

A classic was in Custom Planes, whose avionics writer had nothing in
his bio I found elsewhere to suggest he should be. He was explaining,
in an article entitled "Understanding Parallel Feeds," series verses
parallel wiring in a airplane, for practical reasons hard to fathom
once you thought you understood the title. He described an example of
a builder wiring two 14V radios in series in a plane with a 14V system
(who would?), but his reasons this wouldn't work -- he said both
displays would be dim -- missed the problem of the physical
installation resulting in a common ground. One will work just fine,
the other won't at all.

In another article, he explained Watt's Law to say that if your
battery voltage were to drop to 11 volts, your circuit breakers can
pop, because when voltage goes down, current must go up. So use
bigger breakers. And you'll like his explanation of how all avionics
work, I guess Circuit Design 101:

"Every piece of avionics in your plane contains thousands of [series]
circuits. They're used to modify voltages or signals between
stages...they allow your avionics to use them to drive...even moving
map displays."

Fred F.

I stopped reading custom planes after I bought the issue with the
bearhawk on the cover and found out it was written by budd davisson
the owner of the quick build company. I don't really expect unbiased
reviews from any mag but that was way over the top.

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 15:08:56 GMT, (Drew
Dalgleish) wrote:

I stopped reading custom planes after I bought the issue with the
bearhawk on the cover and found out it was written by budd davisson
the owner of the quick build company. I don't really expect unbiased
reviews from any mag but that was way over the top.

As long as the magazine made it clear that the writer wasn't an
unbiased source, and it sounds like they did (I don't generally read
CP so I don't know), I don't see a problem from an ethical standpoint.
I do think that a review by somebody else would have been of more use
to their readers.

In all fairness to Budd, he was singing the praises of the Bearhawk
long before he became involved financially with it. The situation is
not unlike that of the guy who liked the electric razor so much that
he bought the company. Also, on the email list he has been extremely
generous of his time in answering questions from plans builders who
haven't bought a thing from him as well as the kit builders.

================================================== ==
Del Rawlins--
Unofficial Bearhawk FAQ website:
http://www.rawlinsbrothers.org/bhfaq/
Remove _kills_spammers_ to reply

On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 03:02:23 GMT,
(Del Rawlins) wrote:

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 15:08:56 GMT, (Drew
Dalgleish) wrote:

I stopped reading custom planes after I bought the issue with the
bearhawk on the cover and found out it was written by budd davisson
the owner of the quick build company. I don't really expect unbiased
reviews from any mag but that was way over the top.

As long as the magazine made it clear that the writer wasn't an
unbiased source, and it sounds like they did (I don't generally read
CP so I don't know), I don't see a problem from an ethical standpoint.
I do think that a review by somebody else would have been of more use
to their readers.

In all fairness to Budd, he was singing the praises of the Bearhawk
long before he became involved financially with it. The situation is
not unlike that of the guy who liked the electric razor so much that
he bought the company. Also, on the email list he has been extremely
generous of his time in answering questions from plans builders who
haven't bought a thing from him as well as the kit builders.

================================================= ===
Del Rawlins--
Unofficial Bearhawk FAQ website:
http://www.rawlinsbrothers.org/bhfaq/
Remove _kills_spammers_ to reply

I should have been clearer. I don't have anything against Budd he's a
good writer. I subscribe to the bearhawk list and am impressed with
his candor and willingness to help builders. I don't know if any other
kit manufacturers make themselves so available.
My beef is with CP they didn't make any disclaimer that I can recall.
The bearhawk was their cover story and I bought the mag for that one
story. It wasn't until I started reading it and saw the article that I
found out Budd was the author.