When this aircraft was announced, I was interested.

The website, which appears to have changed slightly, refenced the area rule as the stated reason for the predicted performance.
I knew a little about the paper he referred to because of my grad school work in compressible flow and sent him an email that questions the applicability of the area rule to subsonic aircraft.

Here was his email response, from 2013.



Certainly, I wished for it to be a success, but even way back in the design phase I had some engineering questions that he brushed off. That's fine, no sweat off my back, but I wanted the project to succeed.

I've been waiting for this first flight. Needless to say, it was underwhelming and didn't meet the design goals (to say the least). I'm no expert, but did build a Vans RV. I know the Vans design teams advice is to "simplify and add lightness". It seemed that most of Peter's solutions involved adding weight (steel channel, lead fishing weights.. etc.?) and the empty weight became massive. It's no wonder it didn't get above 100 kts.

What's the end goal here? My impression is that Peter's pushed aside people genuinely trying to help, and at this point the problems are approaching the insurmountable. Neither the engine or the airframe are not going to be very appealing to most buyers with the numbers we've seen so far. Wish him and his depositors work, but it's been torture watching the "process".

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

Once you get neck deep and 4-5 years of all of your time and energy in a project. The desire to will it to work is strong. A few things like not dynoing the engine does come off as a little intentional because how detailed he seems. He thinks it has 400 hp when guys have calculated based on the acceleration that’s it is somewhere between 200-250 hp. I think he has to know it’s not putting out that much hp.

I think he thought he could get it to fly and put out some okay numbers and then he would ask for the escrows. He is a spin master, so he could easily make a case for fixing the weight and get the pressurization ready so he could get closer to the published numbers. Fake it until you make it.

And one thing. He removes any suggestions or critiques from the comments. This guy doesn’t listen to anything from anyone no matter their experience.

Tony I don't disagree with you. At this point however Peter is in a real pickle so to speak. It has taken him what 4 years to get to this point? He would need to start over on the airframe to lighten it up in any kind of a significant way. He would need to reassemble a team, train them, etc etc etc. I don't think Peter has four more years in him for this approach. I also don't think he will find the funding. He would need less the second go round because he has most of the equipment already purchased but still I don't see large amounts of funding pouring in. I think Peter has kind of shot himself in the foot by doing all these videos and being so transparent along the way. If he would have been more selective and only put out a video maybe once a month showing his successes, then we saw that first flight some investors might get excited just because it was flying, looks cool, and they would not have the back story. The problem for Peter is everyone in the entire world knows everything about this project. He has literally pointed out every single flaw, mistake, and redo that was necessary along the way. At this point in the project that is working against him in a big big way. It's probably time to find a museum to put the Raptor in, sell anything of value, brush off the resume and get on with life. The Raptor flew but I don't think it will ever get to the point of production. I really do feel bad for Peter. He gambled on some big decisions early on in the project and they are now coming back to bite him when it matters most.

We only know the mistakes and problems he showed. Which is a lot.

I can’t imagine the mistakes and problems he is covering up or has no idea about.

Ah, the lure of social media: share every moment of your life with millions of strangers. Frankly, I don’t see an upside to doing that.

I agree John it has few upsides, especially if you are a software engineer trying to build a brand new airplane.

Peters “investors” came from social media and the internet so it seems likely that they want updates on the internet. I bet most of his video updates were to show progress to his investors. I doubt if Peter was self funding he would be doing these videos.


I don’t see how he recovers from the video of the flight. After watching that I am sure the investors are not very encouraged.


Mike

Come on now... Nothing a few bags of lead shot for ballast can't fix. :7)

Mike I think you are mostly right. From what I remember initially he was self funding it with money he had made on the sale of a business we previously owned or held a decent share in. At some point along the way he did reach out to the deposit holders for 15k, or 25k or something like that to raise more money. I think he did that twice if I remember right. Then last time he put up a go fund me to raise some additional funds to help him get over the finish line to make the first flight.

All that to say yes I am sure those people wanted to see updates, but you don't have to do 2 or 3 fifteen minute videos every single week for 4 years. You also don't have to go out of your way to point out every single mistake and mishap you had along the way. Showing some of that is fine, but Peter seemed to insist on showing the public everything. At this point that has caught up to him and I doubt many have any confidence in the project which will make gaining additional funding next to impossible in my opinion. But who knows in this day and age, he might be able to come up with 200-400k from crowd funding to keep the project alive another year or two. Time will tell, I just pray he does not kill or seriously injure himself first. If he sucks the gear up on the next flight I think those nasty flying characteristics might be worse and cause the airframe to be uncontrollable. To that end even on his ground effect tests I felt like the craft was not stable in pitch or roll and that proved to be true when he tried to take it around the pattern. We will see what he says in this video this week.

I worked on the J182 program. You’re a large multiple above the actual number. A two digit multiple. But any were too many. Combination of terrible engineering and stubbornness from SMA was the main cause. We had the technology to build piston engines pushing 95”+ of MAP back in WWII. Doing so reliably to a TBO equivalent to a traditional piston engine in that power and weight class still is a challenge.

I worked on the J182 program. You’re a large multiple above the actual number. A two digit multiple. But any were too many. Combination of terrible engineering and stubbornness from SMA was the main cause. We had the technology to build piston engines pushing 95”+ of MAP back in WWII. Doing so reliably to a TBO equivalent to a traditional piston engine in that power and weight class still is a challenge.

He would send out emails to get people to invest an additional $18,000 plus the release of the $2000 escrow. They would get .25% of the company, guaranteed pricing on the kit and move to the front of the line. I think he got 135 people to do the $20,000 deal. So, that’s $2,700,000. It seems like he offered bigger percentage of the company and got some more money to bring it up to $3 million. The gofundme was just some of the super fans getting money so he could pay for the test pilots.

I imagine he is going to do as little as possible to get the cooling sorted out. Fly it retracting the gear which may make those pitch oscillations even worse. Then, he’s done because the gear isn’t causing that and he is basically out of money. I guess he could make a case to get the escrow holders to release the money since “he is so close”. That’s another #2 million if 1000 deposit holders still exists.

Almost all of my retract experience is in my Bonanza, which was more stable at low speeds with the gear down. Is there any airplane that’s less stable with it down?

Nope