Interesting video. Really brings home how much can go wrong with a new design.
It has been an interesting adventure from start to now.
I’m with everyone else, I’ve seen wisdom handed for free, and dismissed, which cost the projects months to fix.
Now, dissing experts… this seems dangerous to me.
I watched the flight test guys video and have seen the occasional video from the raptor chap. It was interesting to see their point of view.
I like to see people try new things, however it is a bit irratating when we see constantly see huge claims which never appear. It’s like many of the kickstarters with a slick production video of a prop, but no ability to achieve what they’re claiming.
@Off_Field I agree. I was done with Kickstarter after backing a huge product on Indigogo and losing a decent mount when the company failed to materialize anything, and Indiegogo didn’t care despite them hauling off with $1.4M of other peoples’ money.
The company never even tried to provide updates or anything.
Easiest $1.4m ever. (aside from possibly not ever sleeping at night again)
At least Peter Mueller is public with his whole process, and we can all see the progress. That’s a huge benefit I would say, as I learned a great deal from watching his videos.
Even if the plane doesn’t ever make it, I’m still grateful for his transparency and honest videos on the real challenges of building a commercial aircraft.
Same on the stock market. Almost all startups fail and you lose 100%. I went through a period of investing in interesting new ventures and lost 100% on every single one.
This guy is taking on too many risks all at the same time, while disregarding established and proven market resistance to unproven ideas.
He does have an awful lot of people plugging it on social media. I wonder whether some people have bought positions or some such? We used to have a guy on here who bought positions in the Cirrus Jet and was all over the forum…
He does seem to have a lot of fans on youtube.
From what i can make out he has sold ~120 deposits at 20K each ($2.5M) to finance the development and construction of the prototype, and taken 1500 refundable deposits at $2K each for the following slots. Some of the people who have bought in seem to have no aviation expertise (some apparently taking the stated 3600nm range at 25K’ in pressurized comfort at 300kts at face value, hoping to take their family to hawaii in it), while other look like they should know better (airline pilots) are in as well.
there is a much more analytic discussion here www.homebuiltairplanes.com/forums/threads/raptor-composite-aircraft.24721/, with almost 5500 posts on this subject. I am sad to say that i have read all of them over the past few months – it really does make you wonder.
I am tempted to summarize the discussion there, but i dont even know where to start.
Seems like a piston GA version of the Eclipse, except the latter did it “properly” and raised more like $1BN from “investors”.
Social media is always full of people who bought the production slots, talking-up the project. It was the same with the Cirrus Jet, a bit here on EuroGA too.
hammer wrote:
I am tempted to summarize the discussion there, but i dont even know where to start.
Would you be able to post some highlights? I’ve only picked up bits of this here and there. Like many of these I suspect it will over promise and under deliver.
I tried to summarize only one thing, which is why he ended up bolting 1/4" steel plates to the outside of the fuselage to stiffen the aileron control system. But to explain why i would have to then talk about the carbon fiber layups, empty weight increase, aileron dynamic balancing, and airliner level control cable tensions. One thing seems to lead into another. I really don’t know where to start.You will just have to start watching the videos and reading the commentary on homebuiltaircraft.com
@hammer you’re killing us! :)
“there’s this great discussion with gold nuggets in it, but oof, 5000 posts…”
Ah man! No summary?!
I won’t have a free day for quite a bit…
Those initial juicy bits you just gave were great!
Any more, perhaps maybe possibly?
The audience waits with bated breath in anticipation of the great @hammer…
