I do understand the scepticism most licensed pilots may feel towards experimentaly built aircraft IN GENERAL and I cannot easily dismiss that concern as a non-issue. I have always maintained I would be more comfortable purchasing an average production aircraft than a randomly selected homebuilt. With the purchase of a production aircraft, the buyer is at least assured a minimum level of construction quality is built in, the FAA would have it no other way. Period. All bets are off as regards the experimental category. Whether the "average" homebuilt has a built-in higher quality standard than the average factory built aircraft is a dubious assertion and arguable at best. Certainly, we have all seen expertly amateur built aircraft that can easily far exceed the quality standards of typical production aircraft but I tend to see these cherry picked examples not necessarily representive of "average" quality. I have seen many, many crudely built homebuilt aircraft I would not let my mother walk past. I am not talking about RV's in PARTICULAR, I am talking about experimental aircraft in GENERAL. Sometimes we forget RV's occupy but a percentage of homebuilt aircraft and believe me, there are builder groups out there just as vociferiously protective of their choice of favorite homebuilt aircraft as we are ours. All this is of no consequence to the perception of your average licensed pilot who like almost all of us, tend to engage in the mental shorthand exercise of "sterotyping" and as such, tend to lump ALL examples of experimentally built aircraft into one neat category.
