Raptor Aircraft

Tantalum said:
I guess there was too much wind

BUT.. the man redeemed himself a little bit, he's installing an intercooler! I was worried he'd spend the time adding more tanks but he's talking about installing a naca vent in the nose and funneling that to an intercooler
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Hold on, I went and watched the video....he's using it to cool the water.....not the charge air.....
 
3393RP said:
He's probably using 4" ducting because that's the same diameter as dryer vent flex tubing available at Home Depot.
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I don’t think you understand. He found it online and modeled it in CAD. Job well done. What’s the issue?
 
kyleb said:
I don’t think you understand. He found it online and modeled it in CAD. Job well done. What’s the issue?
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No issues at all for Muller. He's good with that.

His internet sourced aftercooler is meant to be used for cooling induction air compressed by a turbocharger by rejecting the heat to a liquid coolant. He's using it in the opposite manner as a liquid to air heat exchanger. His paradigm shifting game changing new era aircraft is devolving into something that favorably compares to a backyard project put together in a repurposed chicken coop.

There is an absence of math in the effort, as usual. Muller made a guess at the expected airflow rate through the heat exchanger based on the flow rate given by the manufacturer, but that figure was for air compressed by a turbo. Airflow to the HX through a NACA duct in the nose won't be close to that. How did he come up with the 800 CFM number?

He has no idea how to calculate the predicted additional heat rejection, and not knowing the true air and coolant pressure, flow velocity, and rate would prevent him from doing so even if he did know how to calculate it. The HX manufacturer doesn't provide data for the water side, other than the fins per inch.

It hasn't occurred to him while running coolant through the cabin heater, his tanks, and now another HX, that the engine's water pump wasn't sized to push coolant through all that stuff along with the added hose lengths. The additional pressure drop through those devices will lower the total system flow rate, further reducing the heat rejection system efficiency. How much? Who knows? He creates more problems as he attempts to solve others.
 
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3393RP said:
His paradigm shifting game changing new era aircraft is devolving into something that favorably compares to a backyard project put together in a repurposed chicken coop.
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Repurposed chicken coop users across the globe are offended by this post. Ernest K Gann is rolling over in his grave.
 
kyleb said:
Repurposed chicken coop users across the globe are offended by this post. Ernest K Gann is rolling over in his grave.
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My brother in Boulder turned his into a badass music studio. He is a guitar god.
 
Racerx said:
Uh oh. He's turned the comments off.
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Probably not a bad idea. Most of them don't know what they're talking about, and he ignores the good suggestions.

He also seems to have wiped the website. Maybe another step toward "production" or maybe he's getting ready to disappear.
 
You all are a bunch of bullies, seriously.

You take a man with obvious narcissistic personality disorder, whose delusions of grandeur get him to repurpose a successful aircraft as a model and completely screw it up with a European motor to match his European accent, all while he makes wile-e-coyote mistake upon mistake; you continue to ridicule him as though if the rest of us aren’t watching the train wreck in slow motion.

You all are entirely cruel. I’m sure you will all feel horrible about your dogpile when the man meets the limits of his own engineering skills without the roadrunner replay. Shame on you.

Where did my popcorn go?


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231TC said:
Probably not a bad idea. Most of them don't know what they're talking about, and he ignores the good suggestions.

He also seems to have wiped the website. Maybe another step toward "production" or maybe he's getting ready to disappear.
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Or so he can get rid of the ludicrous claims of speed, useful load, and efficiency.

In one of the last videos someone asked why he has overheating issues. During test runs early in the build it ran at full power for an hour and didn't have that problem. Peter actually replied. He had drums of water remotely piped in just so he "could have more time".
 
Racerx said:
Or so he can get rid of the ludicrous claims of speed, useful load, and efficiency.

In one of the last videos someone asked why he has overheating issues. During test runs early in the build it ran at full power for an hour and didn't have that problem. Peter actually replied. He had drums of water remotely piped in just so he "could have more time".
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that has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. Not doing something that stupid... but actually admitting it to someone.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
that has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. Not doing something that stupid... but actually admitting it to someone.
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How often you see engines on dynos with the cars radiator system hooked up? I don't see any problem with hooking up a water supply for an engine on a test stand. Obviously his cowling and all was not in place to test the whole system.

That is of course no excuse for the band aids he is currently applying to the system. In the last video he admits the radiator isn't working well. Makes you want to reach through the screen and slap him to his senses.
 
3393RP said:
I'll take B.
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He has limited choices. He can give up publicly, he can go dark, or he can crash. I suppose he could limp this thing along until the public loses interest, but that's not the way of someone like him.
 
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jrcox19 said:
Pretty sure his Australian accent isn't from Europe...
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Rats! You got me :)

As much as I hate to say it, this will not end well.


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OneCharlieTango said:
He has limited choices. He can give up publicly, he can go dark, or he can crash. I suppose he could limp this thing along until the public loses interest, but that's not the way of someone like him.
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He *could* take a period of downtime and implement solutions (particularly on the engine side) that experienced people have suggested. My sense is his fabrication skills are very limited and that the hired help did all of the heavy lifting in the construction of the prototype. Also that he's basically out of money. Which is why he's screwed around and accomplished almost nothing in the 16 months since the DAR's initial sign-off in August, 2019. Even if he wanted to make changes, he doesn't have the skills to make the changes himself and doesn't have the money to hire someone to make the changes for him.

So he's stuck in never-never land. Never gonna give up, never gonna make any real progress.
 
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3393RP said:
There is an absence of math in the effort, as usual. Muller made a guess at the expected airflow rate through the heat exchanger based on the flow rate given by the manufacturer, but that figure was for air compressed by a turbo. Airflow to the HX through a NACA duct in the nose won't be close to that. How did he come up with the 800 CFM number?

He has no idea how to calculate the predicted additional heat rejection, and not knowing the true air and coolant pressure, flow velocity, and rate would prevent him from doing so even if he did know how to calculate it. The HX manufacturer doesn't provide data for the water side, other than the fins per inch.
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He was using the area of the 3.5 inch pipe at 120 kts. With zero pressure drop and in a perfect world, that's around 800 cfm, so that part is right. Problem is with that 10 inch deep HX tacked on, it won't even flow half of that in reality. As you point out, Peter has no idea on how to calculate the heat rejection X airflow through that HX would result in anyway. 800 cfm sounds good to the YT crowd but it's erroneous and meaningless without the other data to solve for.

Looks like he saw the core online, figured it would fit nicely and ordered it up. Clearly he has no understanding about things like pressure drop and thermal gradient. Despite numerous people telling him to measure the Delta P across the HXs, which is cheap and easy and tells most of the story, he never even bothered, instead, went off on yet another wild hunch and applied yet another ill-conceived bandaid.
 
Racerx said:
Or so he can get rid of the ludicrous claims of speed, useful load, and efficiency.

In one of the last videos someone asked why he has overheating issues. During test runs early in the build it ran at full power for an hour and didn't have that problem. Peter actually replied. He had drums of water remotely piped in just so he "could have more time".
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Don't think for a minute that he hasn't considered putting those drums of water in the back seat. Sadly, due to the beast already being morbidly overweight, he had to settle for miniature versions in the nose.
 
Is there still a DER involved or does that come later/ever?
 
What a clown. The whole dang airplane is going to be turned into a radiator and he still won't have stable temps. He "wanted to see if anything funny happened with oil temps at 265F". What the hell does that prove? That you can run oil temps 50+ degrees higher than where they should ever be under normal operation? That you have to run the heater constantly and drop power to 40% in order to get some semblance of reasonable temps? Dude just needs to have the engine shell itself so he can walk away from the project blaming Audi, lol.
 
wrbix said:
Is there still a DER involved or does that come later/ever?
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Designated Airworthiness Representative (DAR), in this case, not DER (Designated Engineering Representative).

Sort of. The airplane has to have a DAR review annually based on being registered as Experimental R&D (or maybe Experimental Exhibition?) - I don't remember. In any case, it is as much an administrative paperwork review as it is a referendum on the craft's flightworthiness.

You're just looking at a guy who's in way over his head. He's spent the last 16 months messing around with this thing, doing what would have been a month's work (or less) if he employed a skilled person to help with fabrication/installation and listened to the advise of a couple of people who have been there/done that.
 
SoonerAviator said:
What a clown. The whole dang airplane is going to be turned into a radiator and he still won't have stable temps. He "wanted to see if anything funny happened with oil temps at 265F". What the hell does that prove? That you can run oil temps 50+ degrees higher than where they should ever be under normal operation? That you have to run the heater constantly and drop power to 40% in order to get some semblance of reasonable temps? Dude just needs to have the engine shell itself so he can walk away from the project blaming Audi, lol.
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Maybe that's what he was hoping for. Getting oil temp to the point of breakdown so he wouldn't have to buy another pair of pants after the second flight.
 
I’m wondering if the timing belt driven water pump can sufficiently move that volume of fluid through the daisy chain of coolers and reservoirs.
 
jaxcessnadriver said:
I’m wondering if the timing belt driven water pump can sufficiently move that volume of fluid through the daisy chain of coolers and reservoirs.
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I think he’s adding a hydraulic pump on the engine to run a hydraulic motor driven water pump. The efficiency of hydraulic drive will keep the load down on whole system while still moving all the water around the aircraft.
 
231TC said:
Too simple. Needs an auxiliary engine in the nose to run the hydraulic pump.
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Yeah, but that's easy. He can just buy one of these and mount it to the nose.. it's free energy! The airplane is already travelling through the air so might as well get some power generated from it. The design is truly genius

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Tantalum said:
Yeah, but that's easy. He can just buy one of these and mount it to the nose.. it's free energy! The airplane is already travelling through the air so might as well get some power generated from it. The design is truly genius

]
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The genius part is to get rid of the combustion engine and replace it what an electric motor. If you mount this on top of the airplane to generate the energy to run the electric motor, isn’t that the genius part? All you need now is a small battery to accomplish the lunch and then this will propel itself infinitely.

why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? I think I’m the first one to ever do that. I shall name my creation “perpetual motion”!

I will be available later in the day to sign autographs.
 
Looks like the speed decayed to recorded min of 79 knots (91mph) during initial climbing turn. At heading 326. No idea if that is GS or airspeed. Wind low, maybe 5 knots so barely matters. Deary me!!! Launch on 170 at 112 knots then immediately turned passing through 326 ...

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FlightAware should give us ground speed based either on ADS-B-reported GPS position or ADS-B-reported GPS speed. The altitude is probably ADS-B-reported pressure altitude, which is completely unreliable in the Raptor. And recall that he therefore has no trustworthy airspeed indications in the cockpit, because the IAS and TAS are screwed up by the unreliable pitot/static system and probably further thrown off by his likely high-AOA flight, so he cares mostly about GS which is going to be a problem in any noticeable winds.

The KVLD METAR showed winds of 000@00 at 1253Z, VRB@04 at 1353Z, and 020@12 at 1453Z. NOAA soundings show a wind of 355@8-18 between the surface and pattern altitude at 1400Z. The flight was for 6 minutes starting at 1350Z.

My take on the FlightAware track log is that he was having heat and performance problems again, so he started turning right to intercept the crossing runway as he did on the first flight. Then he decided to fly a downwind for RWY 17, realized on base that he was overshooting and/or the winds were not as he had thought, made a right downwind for RWY 35, made a shallow turn from downwind to final, and landed.

The temperatures were also cold for Georgia. It was just above 0C when he took off and no more than 3C at any altitude he could have reached. If the plane can't perform today, it can't perform at all.

My guess is that it will take a few days of editing to make the video look good and we'll see something on Friday afternoon. Then we can compare notes and see how far off our guesses were.
 
He's got a graceful out at this point, if only he'd take it. He designed and built a craft that has flown twice. Not many people can claim that. This would be a great time for him to recognize that the thing he's kludging together is never going to be what he envisioned it to be, make some bold statement about how successful the project has been, but dammit, the market and the funding simply aren't there for such an advanced design and so with great reluctance he is suspending development.

There--a simple way to save his ego and his hide.
 
I'd rather see him rip that **** drivetrain out and throw something like an iE2 TEO-540 in it so he's still got the technology aspect he wants and let 'er rip.
 
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