I can think of two examples of why suppliers might shy away from dealing with airplane builders.

The first was the Lancair builder that assembled his entire aircraft without taking the peel-ply off the parts.  I heard that it was ultimately chain-sawed into many pieces.

The second was the dentist who was the thrifty type, and built his Lancair using flattened institutional size tomato paste cans for his engine baffling.

These examples are real, and have not been invented.  We all know that the future widows' lawyers would sue everyone that supplied parts to these idiots.

Then there was the Lancair builder in the mid-nineties that failed his inspection because he had used aluminum fittings on his oil lines to his turbos instead of steel fittings.   He apparently didn't think that the factory rep knew what he was talking about, and flew with his son a few days later.
The aluminum melted, spraying oil on the red-hot turbos.  The Lancair dropped out of the air like a comet.

The point is, airplane builders do strange things, and we Lancair builders are no exception.  We create a feeding frenzy for shark lawyers who feast on our carelessness, and we should not be surprised that we have a bad reputation among parts suppliers.  Bad news travels fast.

Also, when you consider the above examples, they give you a little insight as to why Avemco pulled out of the insurance market for our planes--these examples, plus things like ATP rated Lancair pilots running out of gas...

In any event, the advice given yesterday to the newbies about not telling people you are buying parts for airplane building is good advice.  Tell them nothing, or if you have to tell them something, tell them you are an engineer, and you are making a prototype which you can't talk about.

This being said, have all you guys out there used steel fittings on your oil lines?   Well, duh!  It really isn't such a dumb question, after all!

David Jones, Pecatonica, Illinois