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Bob - thanks for fighting the battle with the FAA, and congratulations on
your victory.

Scott - thanks for the amusing comments, as always.  It's fun to listen to
good points of logic, espcecially when they are delivered with humor.

Now for my two cents...

Bob did the right thing by proving that his airplane did not cruise above 180
KCAS, which is, after all, the governing criteria for quailifying for the
3-inch letters.  However, Scott is right in that the top of the green arc is
the "maximum structural cruising speed" and, as he states, it is the highest
airspeed at which an FAA-approved vertical gust will not damage the aircraft.
 (It would appear that the FAA has an arrangement with the weather gods
whereby those vertical gusts are never exceeded in smooth air.)  This number
(Vno) has no bearing on the airplane's ability to actually go that fast --
the top of the green arc in my Cessna 150 was a good 15 mph faster than the
airplane ever went in level flight.  I also had a friend with a 150-HP 150
that routinely cruised 25 mph into the yellow arc (or so he claimed...)

So Bob is wrong in that the cruising speed does not have to be the top of the
green arc -- that's a structural limitation and has nothing to do with the
normal cruise speed of the airplane.  Unfortunately, Bob ran into one of the
many bureaucrats who just "doesn't get it".  However, that inspector is
probably still out there, cheezed off at all the other two-seat Lancairs with
3-inch lettering, so watch out!

- Rob Wolf
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