As pilots, almost all of us regularly trust our lives to an aircraft someone else has built. We do not pull each rivet, run the wiring, or bolt in the engine before hopping into the cockpit. It is part of what makes getting into an airplane an act of trust.
In many cases, that trust is bought with the standardization, quality control, and testing that goes into type and production certification. However, that has its limits, not the least of which are the oft-disparaged cost of certified models and a certain inability for significant customization. As Henry Ford said of the Model T: “You can have it in any color you want, as long as it is black.”
