Posted for "John Hafen" <j.hafen@comcast.net>:

 I greatly appreciate the assistance I have received from so many of you in
 the building of my IVP.  I completely concur with Brent's words re: panels
 and glass and back-up steam gauges.
  
 AMEN and thanks.
  
 I also appreciate his advice/truisms:
 
  Believe nothing a marketing person tells you.
Fly before you buy.
 If it is a "future upgrade" assume it will never happen.
 Plan for when it breaks.
 
  
 I particularly like the "Believe nothing a marketing person tells you."  I
 flashed back to the Lancair web page and remember getting excited (in my
 extreme naivety/ignorance) about a hot kit plane that would be easy to
 build.  A quote from the site (bold is added):
 
  It was a revolutionary and lofty goal back in 1990: To design and produce a
 345 mph, four seat, pressurized aircraft that could be easily built in one's
 home shop. Now, more than ten years later and after continual refinement,
 the Lancair IV has truly proven itself to be incredibly fast, efficient,
 safe, reliable, comfortable and now more than ever, easy to build.
  
 Easy to build?  Relative to what?  A nuclear submarine, perhaps?  I suppose
 its all relative.
 
  And another piece of marketing data:  Price for a fast build IVP: $122,500.
 So the IVP kit is easy to build AND relatively inexpensive (oh, never mind
 the other $300-$400k its going to take you to get the plane airborne).
  
 Then there is the "Fly before you buy," and "Plan for when it breaks."  Lets
 talk about Ballistic Recovery Systems......
 
 
 Cheers,
  John Hafen