Raptor Aircraft

Tantalum said:
oof... what an awful pattern
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Is it just a coincidence the flight is shaped like an ass?
 
Hey, at least it flies. It’s not a complete loss or failure.

From a weight-to-power ratio, I wonder where it stands now compared to other similar airframes? And if you shed the weight of the Audi (and all it’s added stuff for cooling) if you could be lighter with a TCM, Lyco, or Rotax, and climb better and cruise faster? Anyone here knowledgeable enough and have enough time on their hands to do cocktail napkin math?

Shelve the Audi for now, install a timed-out dinosaur engine and get the airframe worked out. Heck, take the Audi to a dyno and work out the issues there.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
Hey, at least it flies. It’s not a complete loss or failure.

From a weight-to-power ratio, I wonder where it stands now compared to other similar airframes? And if you shed the weight of the Audi (and all it’s added stuff for cooling) if you could be lighter with a TCM, Lyco, or Rotax, and climb better and cruise faster? Anyone here knowledgeable enough and have enough time on their hands to do cocktail napkin math?

Shelve the Audi for now, install a timed-out dinosaur engine and get the airframe worked out. Heck, take the Audi to a dyno and work out the issues there.
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Most people would have started with these suggestions, I doubt he will fall back to them now.
 
The plane is still not stable in any axis. It is also overheating still and its performance doesn't compare to a Cessna 152. What is the point of all this?
 
pilotrick said:
The plane is still not stable in any axis. It is also overheating still and its performance doesn't compare to a Cessna 152. What is the point of all this?
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The whole thing is a series of fixes. That said, if he'd correct the cooling and other drivetrain issues, at least he could get it high enough to retract the gear and do some real flight testing. If he gets it to that point, my bet is that it performs like a fat Velocity. Say 175 mph, and 800FPM climb, solo. With passengers or baggage, It'll be too heavy to fly safely.
 
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pilotrick said:
The plane is still not stable in any axis. It is also overheating still and its performance doesn't compare to a Cessna 152. What is the point of all this?
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Hold on one gosh-darn minute. Other than having a smaller useful load and being an unstable, fast-stalling, fuel-guzzling crucible with wings, the performance does compare to a Cessna 152.

FastEddieB said:
Second flight video is up.
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My face and palm remained apart for the entire first 20 seconds of the video (I did yell at the screen to fix his cockpit audio recording, but no facepalms), until he said: "Winds were out of the north, about 3 to 4 knots, but I decided to see how it felt going down the runway with a tailwind like that anyway." Then I had to join my friends:
jiFfM.jpg


Seriously, if I am ever test-flying a plane that nearly killed me in several different ways on the previous attempt and on numerous simple taxi tests, has questionable performance and, at best, unknown stability characteristics, is likely to blow up the engine turning crosswind, has unreliable flight instruments, and is being watched by 23,000 YouTube subscribers plus thousands of other aviation nerds who variously want to see me succeed and openly say they hope I livestream my flights so the inevitable fiery crash doesn't mean I can't edit and upload video of the event... And if I am actually on the ground in said airplane, taxiing out to take off into my second attempted flight... I will absolutely not in any circumstances, regardless of my curiosity level take off with a tailwind of any velocity.

This is a guy who ballasted the plane so he wouldn't have to use ailerons. A guy who has rejected high-speed taxi testing in crosswinds over 2 knots. Frankly, a guy who just landed closer to the centerline than I do 99% of the time. And he took off with a tailwind. My post earlier today gave him too much benefit of the doubt, thinking he took off when it was light and variable or even calm and the winds came up during his 6-minute flight.

I hereby retract my prior double facepalm...
triple-facepalm.jpg


Okay, moving on...

1:30, at an altitude of about 10 feet AGL: "It was a bit bumpy up at altitude there."

2:00: "I was climbing at about 600 feet a minute." Maybe the panel was indicating that, but given the static system errors I am astonished he would even have the VS displayed on his PFD, much less talk about it. Also, climbing at 600 feet per minute while solo with barely enough fuel for 20 minutes of flight plus a VFR reserve (assuming it will actually cruise at 14 gph as the website claimed, which is also in doubt) is not exactly a big improvement over the state of the art that this plane is intended to revolutionize.

3:25: He is going to add "aerodynamic foils to the spades on the ailerons" to reduce the heaviness of the aileron control.

4:20: His earlier claim that the stability problems had been fixed appears to have been premature.

5:00: He claims that the bumps were because he was going too slow, at 105 KIAS. Note that his lowest fuel flow up to this point in the flight was 12 gph, just below the website's claimed high-speed cruise setting of 14 gph at 285 KTAS. Economy cruise of 7 gph at 232 KTAS seems very improbable, especially since he was burning >9 gph the entire way down his final approach.

6:20: He says that he had 1 gallon in each wing tank and 10 gallons in the header tank. Automotive diesel is about 7 lb/gal, so he had about 84 lb of fuel on board. He says, "I don't think that I used very much fuel on this flight." And here, I thought test flying was all about measuring things. I'm learning so much.

13:00: See the pink graph with a ton of noise? That's labeled as the engine oil pressure. Is it normal for engine oil pressure to be that noisy? I have never run an automotive turbocharged diesel engine with a reduction drive and constant-speed propeller on it, nor have I graphed the oil pressure from any one of those items, so maybe this is normal. But it looks a little water-hammery to me.

Wrap-up: He is planning to put fuel in the wing tanks next time and see if it sloshes around enough to kill him, and after that take the wheel well covers off to see if he can get enough altitude to cycle the gear up and down before the engine melts.
 
Any sense of rational discussion has long since departed this thread. It's sad that it's turned into a bash session where anything the builder posts will be ridiculed. It's just an echo chamber in here, in case no one has noticed.

Nauga,
who hopes he is never judged by the ductility of his tufts
 
Short answer, no it shouldn't be that noisy since everything else is pretty smooth.
 
iamtheari said:
Hold on one gosh-darn minute. Other than having a smaller useful load and being an unstable, fast-stalling, fuel-guzzling crucible with wings, the performance does compare to a Cessna 152.
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Nope. A 152 on a cold day with one pax and 12 gallons of gas will out climb this thing! A 152 can carry more and has a higher ceiling. It can also fly faster with a steady oil temp. The Craptor cannot maintain level flight without runway temps. Also the 152 just looks better!
 
On the oil pressure- maybe something going on with pressure relief or bypass in the system? Aeration of the oil? Problem with cooler?
 
nauga said:
Any sense of rational discussion has long since departed this thread. It's sad that it's turned into a bash session where anything the builder posts will be ridiculed. It's just an echo chamber in here, in case no one has noticed.

Nauga,
who hopes he is never judged by the ductility of his tufts
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Give us the counter points. I’m curious what your thoughts are on his progress.
 
nauga said:
Any sense of rational discussion has long since departed this thread. It's sad that it's turned into a bash session where anything the builder posts will be ridiculed. It's just an echo chamber in here, in case no one has noticed.

Nauga,
who hopes he is never judged by the ductility of his tufts
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I come here for the echo chamber because the nazi's at https://www.homebuiltairplanes.com have decided to remove any negative comment about Peter. I love to hear about how incompetent he is, for my personal amusement. We all know how this will end, but we don't know when or how. My guess is before flight 10 with a botched deployment of the BRS will do him in. Good idea to have a live stream so we can make sure to watch the video! Sadly, the NTSB probably won't release the video to us.
 
pilotrick said:
I come here for the echo chamber because the nazi's at https://www.homebuiltairplanes.com have decided to remove any negative comment about Peter. I love to hear about how incompetent he is, for my personal amusement. We all know how this will end, but we don't know when or how. My guess is before flight 10 with a botched deployment of the BRS will do him in. Good idea to have a live stream so we can make sure to watch the video! Sadly, the NTSB probably won't release the video to us.
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That’s the part you think is sad?

He’s a real live person.
 
I haven’t really been following this closely at all. When I saw the original web site and the performance claims, my non aeronautical engineer reaction was... “Yeah, right”. It just seemed like it would require a few unicorns sprinkling pixie dust to make it meet those claims. Given the little bits I’d seen in earlier videos, I’m just impressed that it’s actually made two test flights. I think the chances of this airplane coming anywhere remotely close to its design goals approaches zero, and I suspect it’s chances of being reproduced in kit or production form are right there too. But, hey, he’s built and flown something of his own design. That’s impressive. There are a ton of one-off homebuilts that didn’t live up to expectations.
 
DaleB said:
I haven’t really been following this closely at all. When I saw the original web site and the performance claims, my non aeronautical engineer reaction was... “Yeah, right”. It just seemed like it would require a few unicorns sprinkling pixie dust to make it meet those claims. Given the little bits I’d seen in earlier videos, I’m just impressed that it’s actually made two test flights. I think the chances of this airplane coming anywhere remotely close to its design goals approaches zero, and I suspect it’s chances of being reproduced in kit or production form are right there too. But, hey, he’s built and flown something of his own design. That’s impressive. There are a ton of one-off homebuilts that didn’t live up to expectations.
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Most one-off homebuilts don't have his level of funding/investors that he has.
 
Mtns2Skies said:
Most one-off homebuilts don't have his level of funding/investors that he has.
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No, they don't. And I can't imagine why anyone would be sucked into investing money in something so obviously unrealistic, but it happens every day. People make obviously silly pie-in-the-sky promises all the time, and there seems to be a very large pool of people with way more money than sense. I mean, how long has Moller been at it? Decades... and as far as I can tell, there's still nothing there but a huge money black hole, which is impressive when you look at what others are doing. "Impressive" in the sense of, I can't believe people still fall for it.

He's managed to get other people to fund a full time hobby; my guess is he'll string this along indefinitely as long as there's a supply of money to be had.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
Hey, at least it flies. It’s not a complete loss or failure.
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Until it doesn't. I don't know what it is on his aircraft but Phase 1 on my 10 was 40 hours. That's a lot of circle the airport flights for him!
 
I wonder if stall and dive testing will be videotaped? It’s one thing to wobble around the pattern at 95kts. It’s a whole different matter to put the nose down at over 300kts and see how it behaves. The “customers” deserve to know how handles near the design limits.
 
Brad Smith said:
I wonder if stall and dive testing will be videotaped? It’s one thing to wobble around the pattern at 95kts. It’s a whole different matter to put the nose down at over 300kts and see how it behaves. The “customers” deserve to know how handles near the design limits.
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I think wobbling around the pattern is showing how it handles near the limits.
 
Thinking about those poor investors. The old saying comes to mind: a fool and his money are soon parted.
 
nauga said:
anything the builder posts will be ridiculed
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Ultimately Peter has to sleep in the bed he made. He's alienated just about everybody from the project and it comes down to his attitude. COPA mag recently had some issues detailing the very first SR Cirrus they were building.. a lot of what they did for testing could be considered hokey, dropping barrels out of a rented c-123 provider to test their parachute, many of them tearing and failing, and a plane that had lots and lots of wrinkles to iron out

Peter's his own worst enemy, rejecting all sorts of sound advice and instead doing this entire thing by thought experiment and refusing to do any real learning along the way
 
This is a pretty cool build. I thought mooney had really pushed the limits of performance/aerodynamics. I would have never guessed a pregnant dolphin looking aircraft would do so much better on less. Can’t wait to see when he kicks on the anti-matter reactor and gets that thing up to the 300’s
 
Tantalum said:
Peter's his own worst enemy, rejecting all sorts of sound advice and instead doing this entire thing by thought experiment and refusing to do any real learning along the way
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What's your stake in this?

Nauga,
whose feelings aren't hurt
 
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