EBB,
Thanks for your feedback on the install guide. We do proofread our guides, but with the number of updates we do, and the complexity of our product, it's inevitable that some things will be missed. We try our best, and we're actually very proud of our manuals. In this industry, the standard is "no manual". Lots of our competitors release multiple software updates without even doing a manual revision, much less trying to do ones with change logs. We of course will take your feedback and use it to make our manual better.
One communication issue here is that you first complained about the redlined manual, as if the method we use to communicate changes is insufficient. However, now you are discussing actual information that is in the manual, not the way it was released. It's a bit unclear what you ever wanted out of the redlined manual now that you are discussing something else entirely.
We've had long discussions here on the forum about how hard it is to keep a clean document that shows only changes, and again is not standard at all in the industry, Experimental GA or Certified GA. Go look at Garmin's manuals for a G1000. There is not a change document, only the new revision, and even that has only a minimal change table. We know the redlined document is not 100% what some customers want, but it's the best we can do with limited resources, a limited market size, and it seems to have made a majority of customers happier than before.
In the end, if your definition of "bush league" is that a product release is not 100% perfect, then I imagine you are going to be disappointed with most modern products. Garmin, Apple, Honda, Beechcraft, GM, Sony, Microsoft all release products that have bugs either in documentation, and just as often the actual function of the product itself. For example, a change log for the Garmin 430 lists:
Corrected the issue, addressed in SA 1047 and IB 1048, in which CDI (Course Deviation Indicator)/HSI (Horizontal Situation Indicator) scaling on a limited number of LNAV/VNAV and LNAV+V approaches was incorrect.
Yep, a fully certified GPS navigator gave you the wrong CDI indication sometimes. This is just the reality of products that are designed and tested by people. If Dynon's worst transgression is that they called a GTR200 a SL40 in an install manual, but a certified navigator can mislead your in IFR, I'd hate to think of what you'd call Garmin. I'm not even sure of what to think of Beechcraft that hides their service bulletins behind the requirement to pay for a subscription to read them.
The unacceptable thing in aviation is not to have made a mistake, it's to not learn from it. We know that as pilots and as product designers. It's why the aviation world has service bulletins, airworthiness directives. Dynon has a robust reporting, tracking, and corrections system, which allows us to be sure that we do learn from our errors and continue to make our products better. We look forward to your continued input and we'll incorporate it to make our products better.
Finally, it does appear that you have installed 12.0 on your S-LSA. We must re-iterate that this is not allowed and technically your aircraft is no longer conforming and cannot be operated legally in the USA, as the OEM has not released authorization for 12.0 in the RV-12 S-LSA.
--Ian Jordan
