" Even pro's shouldn't be flying these kit planes."
Bullshit! There's absolutely nothing wrong with a well designed kit plane. Many of them are actually sturdier and faster than GA aircraft.
Not that it really matters one way or other, but I recall the guy that designed the VeriEze. He was an aeronautic engineer too – and evidently a pretty good one. Plane designed just dandy. Meanwhile it was specifically designed to be light and be flown in clear weather during daylight hours.
First problem was that builders started putting heavier instruments and harnesses in them for night/bad weather flying. Increased weight to the point they couldn’t safely carry a passenger.
Problem two was that evidently there was a very precise amount of “twist” that had to be built into the aft wing and the builders had a hard time getting it right. Don’t know if anybody bought the farm from it but I recall that there were control issues serious enough that Rutan got right to work redesigning the wing with ailerons incorporated in the new design.
Other than those issues people seemed to like it… I recall they did issue several safety bulletins – one related to getting the center of gravity right.
I don’t know how it had been determined originally but evidently several people (including my uncle) had miscalculated it and went up and took it into a stall and instead of nosing back down it flipped over backwards and into a spin. He started the stall at around 3,000 feet and it took him something like 2,700 feet to pull out.
He said afterwards he had to clean his shorts and fix a bent rudder pedal and stick. Still, he liked his VeriEze at the time. I think he later built an UltraEze or some similarly-named plane they had plans for.
I like to look at it – I’ll even sit in it. I ain’t going up in it though. You can look me up in the lounge when you get back from your trip.