Others vs. Mike Patey?

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MountainDude

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MountainDude
Watching the development of Celera 500, DarkAero, Eviation, all those other electric planes, etc., it's super confusing why they are taking years to do something that Mike Patey does in a few months. In many cases, they are very well funded, have very competent engineers, and very simple designs. Why is Celera taking 8 years and still no exciting news? Why is Eviation taking so long?

I am not an engineer, but Mike Patey makes it all sound very easy: he develops in silico models, then builds them. And it works.

Also, if you look at the planes from before the 80s, many of them went from an idea to first flight in a year, then another year for certification.

With all the technology we have today, why can't planes be brought much faster to market?
 
An engineering friend of mine, who runs a rather large engineering firm, and I were discussing this the other day when talking about the DarkAero team and their work compared to Mike Patey and his team. And he noted there is a MASSIVE difference between building something once that works how you want and building that same thing such that you can then make many of them, and at a reasonable cost. And even then going from that to actually producing the many after is a whole other beast and if you didn't do the first part right, it's just not going to work no matter how amazing your product. And sometimes even if you did do the first part right, still. It's not an easy jump and there is a reason many fail, even when they have a great product. Especially as a new company who is maybe doing that production step for the first time, and didn't understand a lot of things they needed to when doing the initial design.

Mark Patey also alluded to in a recent interview he and Mike have loosely designed planes on paper sort of meant from the ground up to be mass produced. BUT only so much time, and so probably never happen. That's a little telling given how many of these other projects they whip out all the time as you note. The one is soooo much easier/quicker than the other, relatively speaking.

For whatever it's worth, my engineering friend also noted, while not an aerospace engineer himself, just the general way the DarkAero team seems to be doing it all around seems extremely professional and the right way. Here's hoping. That's a potentially impressive little plane.
 
Patey is also building from established designs, though obviously quite modified. The production of scrappy is unfeasible for mass production, and is very crude compared to what dark aero is doing. Thats not to say he doesn't produce some good results.
 
kyleb said:
Mike isn’t pushing or expanding the bounds of technology. Most of the people you mention are. That’s huge.
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Mike isn’t trying to do things that by doing some simple math, or even applying basic logic, are easily shown to be impossible. That’s huge.
 
MountainDude said:
… Mike Patey makes it all sound very easy…
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That’s marketing for you. Mike (and his brother Mark) are not normal and it is not very easy to do what either does. But let’s look at the slats on Scrappy, for example.


That takes a lot of engineering design and knowledge and creativity to come up with. But that’s also worlds apart from a scratch design. They also have people working for them and or hired to do some specialty work, too.

The ADHD probably helps, too.
 
Seems like a really complicated way to do the Helio/Superstol slat gimmick.

TCABM said:
That’s marketing for you. Mike (and his brother Mark) are not normal and it is not very easy to do what either does. But let’s look at the slats on Scrappy, for example.


That takes a lot of engineering design and knowledge and creativity to come up with. But that’s also worlds apart from a scratch design. They also have people working for them and or hired to do some specialty work, too.

The ADHD probably helps, too.
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Reconsider your underlying assumption.
Perhaps these efforts are not so much about results as they are about the financial "journey."
 
Not sure I'd dump the electric examples in with Dark Aero. DA seems to be making measured progress, suspect part of the slowness is trying to raise $$ while doing the development work. They do classes in working with Carbon Fiber for example. The rest are waiting for batteries that haven't arrived yet.
 
Hang 4 said:
Not sure I'd dump the electric examples in with Dark Aero.
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I doubt the others listed would consider themselves comparable to DarkAero either. The other two listed (Celera and Eviation) are both pursuing type certification, which is orders of magnitude more difficult than ex/AB kit production, regardless of the new and/or novel technologies incorporated. Both of them also have flown prototypes, or at least technology demonstrators. I don't believe DA has yet. My opinion of all of these really hinges on how well they do what they say they can do...and none of them have demonstrated that yet.

Hang 4 said:
The rest are waiting for batteries that haven't arrived yet.
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That's a pretty big generalization considering all of the other technology development that is happening in electric aviation.

Nauga,
who has the t-shirts
 
The easy answer, Mike has no desire to certify or sell any of his creations. He isn't trying to impress investors or potential buyers. If he had to hit certain price or performance/efficiency points to build a marketable aircraft, all while appeasing the FAA certification gods, he would take just as long if not longer.

Think hot rodder versus Tesla.
 
midwestpa24 said:
The easy answer, Mike has no desire to certify or sell any of his creations. He isn't trying to impress investors or potential buyers. If he had to hit certain price or performance/efficiency points to build a marketable aircraft, all while appeasing the FAA certification gods, he would take just as long if not longer.

Think hot rodder versus Tesla.
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I don't think I agree. Patey is constantly releasing high quality videos about his work as he goes. Loads better than anything any of the others release publicly anyway.
 
Salty said:
I don't think I agree. Patey is constantly releasing high quality videos about his work as he goes. Loads better than anything any of the others release publicly anyway.
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That is his product though, the videos. Not the aircraft. He didn't build Draco or Scrappy for anyone but himself and his viewers.
 
midwestpa24 said:
That is his product though, the videos. Not the aircraft. He didn't build Draco or Scrappy for anyone but himself and his viewers.
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He has a plane that flies. And does what he said it would do. His product is better than their vapor ware. As are the videos.
 
Salty said:
He has a plane that flies. And does what he said it would do. His product is better than their vapor ware. As are the videos.
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Just because as I said, he isn't trying to build an aircraft for anyone but himself. He doesn't have investors watching his spending. He isn't trying to build a 6 seat airplane with 1,000 mile range at 350 kts on 3 gallons per hour for $50,000 purchase price. He's building the hot rod he wants with his money. He doesn't care if it goes 80kts on 30 gph, or cost him $500k to build. Just like a hot rodder.
 
midwestpa24 said:
Just because as I said, he isn't trying to build an aircraft for anyone but himself. He doesn't have investors watching his spending. He isn't trying to build a 6 seat airplane with 1,000 mile range at 350 kts on 3 gallons per hour for $50,000 purchase price. He's building the hot rod he wants with his money. He doesn't care if it goes 80kts on 30 gph, or cost him $500k to build. Just like a hot rodder.
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Totally disagree. He starts out with specific design targets and he hits them. And I bet he spent less of his own money doing it than the others spend of other people’s money not meeting their design targets.
 
Salty said:
Totally disagree. He starts out with specific design targets and he hits them. And I bet he spent less of his own money doing it than the others spend of other people’s money not meeting their design targets.
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My sense was that Scrappy didn't live up to his performance desires, but I can't keep up with his videos. Does he seem satisfied with how it flies, how fast it flies, etc? I'm sure all the stuff I consider gingerbread (the PV cells, for instance) works, but does the airplane really do what he wanted?
 
midwestpa24 said:
He's building the hot rod he wants with his money. He doesn't care if it goes 80kts on 30 gph, or cost him $500k to build. Just like a hot rodder.
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Salty said:
Totally disagree. He starts out with specific design targets and he hits them. And I bet he spent less of his own money doing it than the others spend of other people’s money not meeting their design targets.
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I don't see what you're disagreeing with. He sets and hits his design targets and is obviously a good engineer, but like the hot rodder or monster truck builder they're his targets and he's doing it not to sell, for the fun of doing it and showing it off in his breathless but good natured way.
 
Dana said:
I don't see what you're disagreeing with. He sets and hits his design targets and is obviously a good engineer, but like the hot rodder or monster truck builder they're his targets and he's doing it not to sell, for the fun of doing it and showing it off in his breathless but good natured way.
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All the targets are *their* targets. But the other guys are claiming targets they can never hit.
 
I don't follow his YouTube but from what I've seen I'm impressed. I would be honored to meet him and buy him a beer.
 
I don't follow any of the youtube aviation guys, has Patey designed, built, and flown an all-new airplane or just mods (however extensive) of existing airplanes?

Nauga,
tubeless
 
I have great respect for the brothers but let’s be real, doing a one off project that will only ever be owned and flown by your self with unlimited funds and equipment is sooooo far from what it takes to design and build a safe, sellable, manufacturable product. Mike does things in excess for publicity and sponsorship. His ideas and implementation while extraordinary aren’t exactly revolutionary like designing and building a safe and useful electric airplane or vtol.
 
kyleb said:
My sense was that Scrappy didn't live up to his performance desires, but I can't keep up with his videos. Does he seem satisfied with how it flies, how fast it flies, etc? I'm sure all the stuff I consider gingerbread (the PV cells, for instance) works, but does the airplane really do what he wanted?
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More power and an constant speed prop were on the short list after the initial flights.

I believe he does everything over the top just because that’s what he wants to do. I believe that YouTube videos probably are not driving that. He built that jeep a long time before YouTube. I have other engineering friends to do the same thing.
 
And the bestugs are basically mobility scooters repackaged. Ah we’ll believe whatever we want to as always on the internet.
 
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