Those of us who fly ‘Uncertified’ aircraft hang our life on them all the time…. In this specific instance at present you can’t legally / officially fly Permit aircraft on the gauges for real anyway.
The OP’s problem seems to be with what might be called certified instrumentation. Given that a proportion of the IR / IMCr syllabus is teaching people how to fly on partial panel when the AI quits, I guess that’s only to be anticipated. The new generation instruments do seem more reliable than the vacuum variety. Our friends in the heavy end of aviation have been relying on them for years.
Drifting the thread a bit, like a wandering AI…
In general with permit / homebuilt aircraft, the range of build and maintenance quality will vary. Thankfully this variation doesn’t step beyond the bounds of safety, before being caught by the inspection system. A builder / owner has more incentive to do a good job, because they will be flying the aeroplane once it’s been competed, unlike the guy on the Cessna production line. Thankfully the PFA / LAA inspection system keeps things reasonably safe.
The comment about loose rivets (not the celebrated Ppruner) in various home built aircraft is fair. My aircraft has just come back from a rebuild following an incident. Some of the rivets were found to have worked over the years. The aeroplane is reputed to be the highest hours homebuilt in the country, admittedly with a mere 3.5K hours on the airframe. It will be interesting to see what happens if we get to the stage of having 14K airframe hour Sportcruisers.
By pure coincidence yesterday I was re-reading
Found at Pharisee, the Richard Bach short story in the A Gift of Wings collection. It is about a man who believes totally in the safety of certification. It’s obviously fiction, with suitable exaggeration to make the point.
I still think you are being a bit hard on the Cessna 152, calling it a polished !!!! rolled in glitter. They are nice old aeroplanes that most of us learned to fly in and remember with great affection…
