Thoughts on Velocity aircraft

[Guitarmaster]

2 minutes ago, DaV8or said:

The vast majority have failed.

Why have they failed?  Was it a faulty design?  Poor marketing?  Not meeting a market?  Honest question, I really don't know.  I know Bede failed mostly due to engine problems (maybe that will be the Raptor's fate), but also because the market is tiny for a tiny jet.  In this case, the market is large for an affordable airplane with lift and range.

As far as what's different?  IDK.  Basing the airplane off of a proven design (SR22).  Completely CAD designed, computer modeled and 'tested.'   Composite technology and our understanding of it has advanced with huge steps in the last decade. 

He may fail.  Lots of people have failed, only to succeed later with a few tweeks.  With the number of deposits he has and very little advertising he has done definitely shows a market.


 

[mccdeuce]

1 hour ago, Guitarmaster said:

In talking with Jeff, it sounds like the next step with the engine is to run it on the test stand for four hours on and one hour off every day; don't know how many days.  
Granted, it doesn't take into account altitude, but it should be a good stress test that simulates a typical flight day.

Lots of details to work out, but if nobody ever challenged the norm, we would still be flying radials on airliners.  

This is the very nature of 'experimental' and I love it.  I hope it goes as advertised, but if not, I'll take my deposit back out of escrow and move on.  After all; nothing ventured, nothing gained. 

You have hit it exactly. This is the nature of experimenting and the true essence of the “Expirmental” category. 

I have dived into the discussion of engines over and over at my home field. People constantly trying to talk me out of my Rotaty choice for my Glasair - I must be crazy to not use a lyco/cont.

 

ultimatley to all the people who don’t like experimenting that’s ok.  You are welcome to stick with certified engines. Or certified engines in kit airplanes. 

For those that want to try something different - keep tinkering. 

[mccdeuce]

38 minutes ago, Guitarmaster said:

Why have they failed?  Was it a faulty design?  Poor marketing?  Not meeting a market?  Honest question, I really don't know. 

So over the years there have been a few companies trying different things with Engines.

Corvair / NSI / Powersport to name 3. 

Corvair has done quite well for a niche market of less HP.

NSI was a Subaru based system and powersport was a rotary one. 

In my opinion both of those companies went under for the main reason of trying to sell “too much” 

“this is the cheapest - most powerful - most reliable - easy to build”

reality is pick 2.  

 

You look at the main 2 companies still trying Mistral and Deltahawk.  They have excellent products but I think their Marketing departments are all wrong. They are targeting certified customers with an experimental product and a price tag that just doesn’t make good business sense. 

[steingar]

So a thought for all this.  What we're really talking about are min-airliners.  Things that go lightening fast in the flight levels.  Experimental.  Built by amateurs.  Mini airliners.  Is anyone getting the gist of this?

 

That's not to say that it can't be done right, and there aren't lots of folks building and flying these things safely.  But Evolution, who builds kits for mini airliners, is either getting bought or going away.  No one will ensure them.  I begin wondering if this isn't the future for the builders of mini airliners.  At the end of the day the insurers always have the last word.

[DaV8or]

15 hours ago, Guitarmaster said:

Why have they failed?  Was it a faulty design?  Poor marketing?  Not meeting a market?  Honest question, I really don't know.  
 

Usually it's over promising and under delivering. Almost never are the stated performance goals met. Almost never does the end product come in as cheap as predicted. Almost never is production on time and usually these companies are on very shaky financials, so one little hiccup and they go belly up.

Marketing is never an issue. News of the latest incredible personal airliner with record breaking capabilities, or fantastic plastic rocket ship on a dime will make the rounds of the aviation community in no time. Everybody hears of it and decides, do they believe the hype, or not.

Bad design was more of a problem back in the '60s and '70s. Today, these kinds of companies have the tools to design something that they know will fly OK and not kill the test pilot on the first flight. The problem usually isn't a bad design, but rather a mediocre design that doesn't come close to the advertised numbers and sometimes the design is OK, but has a nasty bad trait that was not predicted by any computer model that dooms the plane to redesign that cripples the numbers.

The one thing all these start ups in the last 20 years have had in common was, the claim that they could do better then the stodgy old guys because they had incredible computing powers, were going to use modern space age materials and XX numbers of years in experience building cool stuff and they "thought outside the box". Virtually all get a sobering lesson. The only one in the last 20 years that I feel really did achieve the greatness they professed has been Cirrus. Even in the kit world, most new kids on the block fall on their face and successful new designs there are more incrementally evolutionary than revolutionary. There has not been a lot amazing new kits either.

Everything in aviation is trade off and there really is no secret sauce. The technology of fixed wing aircraft using reciprocating engines is a technology that has plateaued. Any advances here will be small and incremental and we see that in the marketplace. 

[DaV8or]

4 hours ago, steingar said:

So a thought for all this.  What we're really talking about are min-airliners.  Things that go lightening fast in the flight levels.  Experimental.  Built by amateurs.  Mini airliners.  Is anyone getting the gist of this?

 

That's not to say that it can't be done right, and there aren't lots of folks building and flying these things safely.  But Evolution, who builds kits for mini airliners, is either getting bought or going away.  No one will ensure them.  I begin wondering if this isn't the future for the builders of mini airliners.  At the end of the day the insurers always have the last word.

Yes. There is a point at which insurance companies don't like the idea of insuring amateurs screwing around with other people's lives. If the Evolution were a single seat hot rod, they likely would be OK with it, but start dragging other innocent and ignorant people along for the ride of their lives and they have to draw a line somewhere.

[Meshach]

Speaking of the Raptor…..

[M20F]

22 hours ago, Meshach said:

Speaking of the Raptor…..

2 more pages I know you all can do it!