There would be a whole lot of airline captain positions open.

As someone who got a 3rd Class Medical yesterday ( thanks Dr. Blue), I feel that this viewpoint is appropriate.

Best,

Tom

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
Theodore Roosevelt"Citizenship in a Republic,"Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

It's an interesting time for Peter. I agree with the observations that he scared himself on that flight. Clearly there are problems with inadequate power, powerplant cooling (with the inlet closed‽), and probably stability or at least flight control response which he doesn't understand in the least. He can twiddle with the engine to make it stop overheating, but his comments at the end of the last video were telling. He is again talking about finding someone else to test fly the plane (on the cheap of course). The problem is that he won't want to hear their proposals (if they are qualified enough to give them). What I think he wants is a surrogate butt to fly his changes so that he doesn't have to go up in it again. Someone who will fly, observe, record, and quietly report back. Then he will make whatever changes he wants and send them up again to take all of the risk. I'll politely decline that offer thank you.

Someone from outside of his world looking in objectively would, assuming they wanted to pursue the venture, start addressing the individual problem areas systematically, using real experts to guide the work. Powerplant experts to set up the engine, and test cell runs to validate its output. Cooling analysis using thermodynamic tools to identify problems with the cooling system and ways to correct them. Aerodynamic testing of the airframe as it exists, in a wind tunnel or otherwise, along with a pitot that provides accurate and trustworthy data. There is nothing here that can't be fixed. Even the weight issue can be fixed in prototype #2 after some careful analysis and creative thinking, but these are things that Peter is not capable of doing himself, and even if he had the money, which he doesn't, he wouldn't want other people telling him what to do, especially if it conflicts with what he thinks.

There are at least two problems here, and they feed on each other. Peter wants to be in charge of all of this project, and he knows he has a very limited and dwindling budget to work with, so he's not going to take the most effective path because he can't afford the money or the time, and that fits just fine with his desire to be the one calling all of the shots.

I doubt that he'll find a suitable test pilot, and I hope he doesn't find any volunteers just for their own safety's sake. The rest will unfortunately take care of itself. He's trying to build a sand castle and the tide is slowly rising. It's an interesting challenge at first, but in the end the ocean is going to win. How much of the castle is left when it's all over is yet to be seen, but the path that he's on is a dead end, and he's not willing to turn from it.

Oh, ok, this makes sense. Aren't those things a bit too big and heavy to be mounted on the exterior though?

Oh, ok, this makes sense. Aren't those things a bit too big and heavy to be mounted on the exterior though?

Since were talking about personality disorders... What disorder do I have that compels me to watch these videos. His flight almost exactly met my expectations. And if he tries to fly it and put the gear up, I am also pretty confident what will happen. None of it surprises me.

There is nothing for me to learn from watching Peter. Exactly the reason I don't watch reality TV. What disorder keeps me coming back to watch these? It must be a pretty common ailment, because we have nearly 200 pages on BT and he gets 1000s of views on Youtube... Will "did you watch Raptor videos" be a question on Med-Express?

I doubt that NASCAR would need grandstands if no one ever crashed.

Glad to see he landed safely and like you I hope it gets permanently parked.

This was probably Freudian but when I first opened the link to Peter's latest video after reading some of the comments here about it I could swear the title in the bottom right corner was "First Real Fright".

Imagine if he hadn’t moved airports. I don’t think he would have made it around a pattern before he was boiling the coolant. It’s amazing he knew he had a cooling problem and instead of setting up some gauges or trying to test to see what his flow was through the cowling. He just takes it on the first flight. The scary thing is how close to the edge of the envelope is this thing?

Back in 06 I bought and built an X Air Hanuman. High wing LSA homebuilt from France but imported from India. Things were not adding up with empty weight and flying characteristics. I kept after the designer with questions basically amounting to if I’m having these problems how have you sold so many kits with so many flying?

He finally admitted that they could not get permission to fly in India so they made changes to the kits and waited for feedback from the builders.

So I was unknowing test pilot of their changes. We went through the same type of problems with early Kitfox and initial LSA airplanes like the CTSW.

If someone builds an airplane and it successfully flies. They start selling kits but the designer may not be an engineer. Or even a real “designer”. Once you build your kit and get it flying you discover you and others were really financing the designer to built prototype #2,3,4 to get to the point where it’s a good airplane. But you now have the “old model” which cannot be upgraded but has problems that should have been corrected with the first prototype. I did learn Magazine flight reviews are not to be trusted. Especially if the review kit company is a major advertiser. Even major manufacturers with team of engineers have a hard time getting a little light airplane right. (Skycatcher comes to mind) imagine the same engineers trying a pressurized turbo auto engine pusher canard.
Remember the old Happy Miles Adventure V8 amphibian, Prescott Pusher, Jan Eggenfeller

Add the diesel C182 to the list. Fifty+ off-field landings during development. But that number is arbitrarily high because the FAA kept insisting on methods that would simply not work.

What's this guy's end game? His website still shows, on the "specifications" page, 1500# UL, 300kts top speed, 3600nm range, 230kt cruise, 1600 fpm climb, and a cost of $130,000.

Given that he'll never meet any of these, what is he hoping to accomplish?

When you're up to your ass in alligators it's hard to remember your objective was to drain the swamp.

Get escrow money released, raise more capital at Oshkosh and other events. Then live and play in the shop and airport for the next decade knowing damn well he’ll never accomplish those goals but his loyal followers will continue to encourage and say things like - if he even gets half way for double the cost it’s a success!

Let’s see, half way for double the cost. $260k for 150 knots, 1800 nm range and 750# useful load.

A bonanza beats that in every way for less $$$ and is readily available tomorrow.

That’s terrible. Do you really think it’s that cynical?