Hot News Aggressive Manual Upgrades Planned

Sequoia Aircraft is beginning the process of (a) revising the existing chapters of the Falco construction manual to clear up points of confusion and to enhance the illustrations by using three-dimensional depictions, (b) adding new chapters to pick up where the manual presently stops, and (c) creating new plan sheets to incorporate revisions and to show details more clearly.

In the theory that 'all of us is smarter than one of us', active Falco builers are invited to work with Sequoia Aircraft on these manuals, to make suggestions for improvements, and to use preliminary copies of the chapters as they work on their Falcos.

To do this, Sequoia will use the magic of the Internet. A private location on the Internet has been created (available only to active Falco builders) where Falco builders can get the current copy of the construction manuals.

In a memo to Falco builders, Sequoia Aircraft President Alfred Scott said,

I think you will find that we are entering an exciting new era in the development of the Falco. Stuart Gane built his Falco in seven years, and then rebuilt it from a wreck in two years. True, he made his own wood parts in the first case and used the kits for the rebuild, but there was still a dramatic reduction in the building time that came from the experience of building the plane. The challenge for us all now is to capture the experience of previous builders and to incorporate the lessons learned into the construction manuals. Using the Internet, we can all operate as if we were all in the same office and have access to the current copies of the construction manual chapters-as they are being written. If something is unclear, you can tell me, I can rework the chapter, and you can have a copy the next day. Beginning in September, we plan to do a monthly mailing of new construction manual pages and construction drawings to all active Falco builders. These mailings will only include chapters that are sufficiently advanced to be considered complete. As such, you will have access to more up-to-date information through the Falco Skunkworks, so I would urge all of you to get hooked up to the Internet so that you can be plugged directly into our office. I hope all of you can see the potential for this. This is exactly the method of working that I've used in developing my WildTools CAD software, and by putting our heads together and working toward a common goal, we've managed to easily double the speed of drawing on a computer. Now, let's all put our heads together and do the same thing for building Falcos.

Because of the rapid changes taking place in the printing industry, the construction manuals will be created with color printing as the ultimate objective. The manuals will include many photographs, and the initial printing will be in black and white. Just-in-time digital printing is already widely available in black and white. These are effectively high-capacity laser printers that are now being used by the printing industry, and the process is used for printing small quantities of manuals now. Since color printing by the same method is starting to appear now, the manuals will be composed with color photographs so that full color manuals will be possible when the printing technology is widely available.