Macca the statement above sort of puts you in the same frame as our current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, that of making statements without really thinking through what he is stating, for purely point scoring reasons.

You state openly that back yard builders are not capable of making good boats because they don't have the technical facilities to be able to do so. At the moment the backyard boys ( who probably make more F16's than AHPC )make boats to weight and the one company who has bought in production ( AHPC only buys in hulls from another company )knowledge, can't.

Now I put that down to one simple reason, profit margins. AHPC have gone down the route of outsourcing production because it has a higher profit margin, no different to probably 1000's of companies in the world. The downside is by using cheap labour and outsourcing you get less control of production methods.

Anyway I'm not sure why we are having this conversation when the Viper is doing so well in sales, AHPC must be getting pretty pissed by now as the F16 sailors will turn against them, particularly if they continue on with this weight issue. Guys get on with selling ( and hence converting sailors ) F16's to the masses.