Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

Update, with at least some good news.

In so many areas of life, overcoming resistance may involve much heat before there is whatever light that may be generated.  Such was the case with the service representative at enginediy, and those associated on both that website, and the sister, stirlingkit.

Long, frank, sometimes unpleasant discussions burned through the boilerplate and diversion of responsibility, revealing humanity as well as weaknesses in the organization.  A mode of critique and suggest, though not initially accepted, (once shared upstairs and laterally) became accepted. Blunt criticism of errors, pointing out their consequences to both buyers and sellers yielded some good results.  Poor responses to issues, historical and current laid bare weaknesses in the business model, as well as potential enhancements for all involved.

The result is the development of goodwill on both sides, and sincere efforts to regain trust extended in good faith, sometimes beyond reason.

That it took an adversarial posture, promising public shaming at potentially great expense, exactly at a moment when the company is promoting several new engines is a defensive reaction compounding the damage when unaddressed, yet provided the necessary pressure to create an inflection point, a springboard to action.

The whippet still has great potential. The company still has growing pains, and in this instance, a botched rollout to overcome, but they are trying, and have already begun adopting suggested organizational and technical fixes.

Traveling hopefully. I can recommend the whippet to the technical among us.  It is not, perhaps never will be, a ready to go product.  It is shipped dry, having never been run, nor the carb ever been mounted, so that level of inspection is not forthcoming.  Here is hoping institution of blanket, rather than spot inspection in the assembly process will catch a higher number of errors, and more robust, proofread instructions will assist buyers.   This would make a great case study for industrial operations classes.

Two words, one person, TECHNICAL WRITER could go a long way developing in-house and customer interface products like instructions and checklists to insure the help people actually can, and reduce the need for nonsense like customers calling the ignition maker (rcexl is made by CH ignitions, btw) for wiring information not provided by the engine sellers.

I keep reminding myself this is a hobby. These are not ready to play toys.

Would that I could start over with them, I probably wouldn’t go for this adventure as it has unfolded. It’s not been fun, even though it will likely come out ok in the long run.  I long for a miniature engine of the type these guys are selling, made with the quality of say, a 1990s Japanese made ENYA  four stroke RC airplane engine……. One can only dream.