Plastic Evangelism Hard Time

Some friends / fellow pilots / readers call me "Plastic Evangelist" or "Diesel Evangelist", because of my well known enthusiasm for plastic flying. I fully agree with them and I assume this nickname.

However the downside of it is that each time a plastic plane has a problem, some come back to me, with a big smile, pointing out that these plastic technologies are dangerous, can not be used in aviation, etc...

Anyway, as a good "evangelist", I never change my mind nor to change their, but I always repeat the same info, re-state the same arguments, endlessly.

The strange point is that most of time, the people criticizing plastic planes are the same that years ago criticized GPS. I think of a particular friend of mine that flies IFR, and learned it before GPS. He is really good and safe at it, no point here. When GNS430 came in the game, he just used it as a NAV/COM. He was not really against it, but he just did not wanted to make the effort of the change.

However as more and more RNAV only waypoints pop arround, he started to reluctantly use the GPS part, and slowly converted to full GPS use.

My point here is that plastic technologies are still considered as "new", and each incident will be pinpointed... and if you're a plastic fan as I am, you should always keep in mind that the change going on is coming from true technological, operational and economical trends, and the safety aspects are also important, so this change will continue, it's only a question of time.

Who reminds the time where IFR was without RNAV ? Amongst those of you who drive manual shifting cars, who reminds the time of "double clutch" ? I'm sure where cars were introduced, many people objected that they had sooooo inconvenient compared to horses...

Only time will tell... don't be tough to non-convinced people.

Plastic Evangelist