I did get a chuckle out of the thermostat debacle...I always wondered what temperature the thermostat was (ie, 160/180/190), but hadn't guessed that it was ECU driven for the Audi. If only there was a way that you could sort that all stuff out on on the ground...perhaps on say, an engine stand.

Pretty funny, in the software world, you try to verify the smallest portions possible in isolation (unit tests) vs testing everything in combination (functional tests). A bit more time on the engine stand would've saved him quite a bit of time fiddling with "test flights"...but I digress.

well yah, but you can lift off at 95kts and cruise at 133 on only 15 gph.

Actually, it is quite hard to find an airplane that operates at those exact numbers.

A cruise to liftoff speed ratio of 1.4 is rare for being so low.

I guess he is pushing the envelope, just not the direction that would actually be useful.

Mike C.

Why? It has 3600 nm range

Has anyone figured out the power to weight on the prototype as it sits, and what equivalent production airplane has a similar power to weight? Cessna 152 maybe?

I think one of the guys over on HBA calculated the power to weight with a pilot and 100 gals was worse than a C172 at gross.

Has anyone figured out the power to weight on the prototype as it sits, and what equivalent production airplane has a similar power to weight? Cessna 152 maybe?

Did anyone else notice that in his second to last video he started a little soliloquy about performance? It starts at about 3:00 into the video.

https://youtu.be/412pEL4Lb1A?t=183

He talks about how he's pretty happy with the performance, how it's going to lose a lot of weight when they've got the production version worked out, it's going to be a spacious cross country cruiser; but then he says this:

"It's not going to be performing as well as a rocketship fast RV or something like that"

Isn't this thing supposed to go 300Kts and climb 2000' a minute. The original Raptor website seems to be down, but Wiki still has those numbers for the plane.

He admitted that the Raptor is going to miss its performance numbers by something like 50%. While I think we all knew this, it's the first time I've heard him say it.

I think an emerging probable scenario is that the plane sort of "works" but that it's such a dog that there is no market for it.

Jack

There is also the potentially bigger issue of being able to provide a kit that is priced appropriately and buildable by a consumer in a reasonable time frame, along with usable instructions.

If it is slower than a Velocity, less fuel efficient per mile than a Velocity, takes several (or more) times the build hours of a Velocity, and the kit costs more than the Velocity, the market size will be zero.

I wonder if there's an airplane in the world that lost weight from the prototype to the production version.

I wonder if there's an airplane in the world that lost weight from the prototype to the production version.

Yes, I noticed the same thing, and laughed when he made the comment that "it's not going to perform as well as a rocketship fast RV."

Looks like he'll have another video up tonight, covering today's flight. Level at 4000, lots of speed variations. Will be interesting to see what he was testing, specifically.

Lots of wind today, that explains variations. It looks to be consistantly slow.
He did maintain his track well.