What defines ‘reputable’ in our industry?

Builders,

I was doing a little post season cleaning in the office and came across a shoe box where Grace had a collection of event souvenirs from the last 18 years. Begs the question: What is the actual material a reputation is made from?

.

.

Above, name tags, buttons, stickers and patches from experimental aviation events around the country. They include press passes from my years working for EAA publications, a great number of exhibitor tags from past Oshkoshes, and a lot of stuff from Corvair Colleges. Yes, ScoobE did get his own passes. They are almost all from 1999 on, the year Grace came into my life. I had been working with Corvairs for 10 years at that point, but had never saved such things. Grace brought many things with her, one of them being a desire to enjoy the ride, not just achieve the goals. Each of the items above draws out memories of days well spent.

.

Next year starts my 29th season in experimental aviation. In our branch of aviation, this puts me in some rare company. There are names which seem to have been around longer, but they are mostly businesses that are on their second or third set of owners, who may tout the longevity of their brand, but don’t serve the original builders nor mission. There are a great number of designers who walked away from or were forced out of the market, even if it was with reason, they no longer served the builders who once believed in them.  And there are names who have been around a long time, but in reality they have just led a long series of LLC’s which frequently folded and took people’s money and dreams with them.  Measured by the reasonable standard of being the original owner of the business, continuously active and still being here for builders, I might be one of 8 or 10 experimental aviation businesses with 28 years of service.

.

I do not deserve any special recognition for this.  This was the way it was supposed to be. In my world, you don’t get a trophy for not being a scam artist or a thief. Maybe a nod for persistence, but accolades need to be made out of something that actually served builders, but sadly our industry spent a lot of time fawning over hundreds of hopeless things like the C-162, The Icon A-5 and countless ripoffs and serial scam artists who showed up at airshows. ‘Journalists’ in search of a saleable story ignored that many of the people they were writing about had previously scammed builders out of vast sums of money under previous business names. This was frustrating to watch, but my ethic were set not to meet the low bar of industry, but to my fathers harsh standard: Values of my Father.

.

Henry Ford famously said “A man cannot base his reputation on what he says he will do.” Today for the sake of comparison, let me offer a list of things which, although common in our industry, I never did:

.

I never closed my business and started another to evade previous customers.  I always thought in the era where you could simply google someones name, no one would get away with this, but I was wrong, todays builders don’t care who was robbed before them, what damage was done to the dreams of others or our industry, just as long as they can get their stuff now.

.

I never took anyones money. In the last 28 years, I sold several million dollars in parts. It didn’t make me rich because it was all made in America and didn’t have the mark up of imported junk, and I spent a lot of the profits on free events like 41 Colleges. I had times where I was behind on deliveries, and any internet search will reveal this, but the reality of the story is that today, I don’t owe a single person a part, and I never took anyones money.

.

I never sued anyone, acted as a paid witness, or profited from any lawsuit. There is a hidden machine in our industry that like product liability just the way it is, because they make piles of money off it, while cultivating a ‘good guy’ image. There are people who work for the EAA right now, as a front to a much more lucrative secret career as a paid expert witness.  In 2002, after surviving a plane crash where I refused to sue the pilot, I was penniless and barely able to work. I was offered $55,000 to testify for one day against Cessna in a frivolous lawsuit. My formal response was “Drop Dead”.  For this, the expert witness club, headed by Richard Finch, conducted a years long campaign to have me black balled from experimental aviation, including a letter writing campaign to the head of the EAA. Read: Expert Witnesses in civil Aviation trials.

.

When I got started in 1989, I thought of aviation, particularly experimental aviation as a brotherhood, made of good people. Time showed this was too simplistic an understanding. Reality was both good and bad: The industry proved to have just the same percentage of scum as greater society, but as a consolation, I have made countless friends who are far better people than I ever imagined existed in my 26-year-old mind in 1989. The good people are far better friends than I deserve, and they have been a more than compensation for the slings and arrows of the vermin.

.

If you are new to experimental aviation, and have never met me in person, know this simple fact: On the eve of my 29th season in aviation, I remain as willing as ever to share what I have carefully learned with a new generation of builders, and if you decide to be one of them, I will gladly welcome you to the brotherhood I myself joined in 1989. The only asset I had was a desire to learn, and all these years later, it is still all anyone needs to get in the door.

.

William Wynne

.