Raptor Aircraft

nauga said:
What's your stake in this?
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Maybe I'm an idealist, when this project first came out I actually almost considered putting down deposit money. My frustration with the archaic nature of so much in generally aviation seemed answered! His first series of videos with the team working assembling the plane were promising, ultimately I chose to save my money and just keep an eye on the project closely as the claims just seemed too good to be true

As this thing progressed it just became disappointing.. so much potential, lots of genuine interest from people even outside the aviation community but his narrow-mindedness seems to doom this project

I'm stubborn but at least I feel like I would have the foresight to hire actual engineers and work with them, the Wasabi thing was pretty much my last straw

nauga said:
whose feelings aren't hurt
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in a defacto way Peter hurt mine haha
 
DaleB said:
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.
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Sounds like Jim Bede
 
Did he really say he took off with 12 gallons? With as poorly as the rest of this thing is engineered, that's pretty ballsy hoping the pickup ain't gonna suck air as much as it wobbles.
 
If he needs to move a larger volume of coolant, might this be an option?

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FastEddieB said:
Worth mentioning that one test pilot was killed when an aileron jammed and he thought he could nurse it in for a safe landing.

He couldn’t.
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It’s not like he had a lot of choice.
 
Which brings up a good question. Why would you test fly a plane designed for a parachute without the parachute?
 
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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Where I live — which is below the roots of an ancient Cyprus tree deep within a cursed and haunted swamp — we* often say that emotions are life’s sauces. “Schadenfreude” is a nasty German emotion, but a good sauce for meat. It is, however, pungent and cloying and easy to overdo. “I like a little heat, but go easy on the emotions from Germany!,” I often cackle into the face of the uncaring moon. LOL!

Wise Nauga of the Supple Tufts, I concur with thee that this thread is over-sauced with schadenfreude. The French use “ennui” in these situations as a mellowing agent. This is wise.



*“We” means myself, those swamp-creatures centuries-ago cursed with power of speech by a passing gypsy thief, and the wayward “Altell” sales representative whom I still hold captive.
 
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The whole meat probe thing was generally a positive for me, because at least twice in the video he demonstrated a sense of humor that will probably help with the project more than any number of yarn tufts. It could even turn into humility. And he is actually measuring things, which I generally approve of.

He mentions a couple of times that he thought the aft CG was causing the foreplane to stall. I don’t know enough about canards to judge this, but it sounds wrong to me. Shouldn’t an aft CG allow the foreplane to fly at a lower AOA by not asking it to provide as much lift, for the same gross weight and airspeed?
 
Aft CG means tail down, canard up. With canard up, its angle of incidence to the relative wind would be greater, hence greater AoA, and closer to stall. It doesn’t really “know” what it’s being asked to do and doesn’t really care :D.

-182 with 33 year old crusty canards.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
Aft CG means tail down, canard up. With canard up, its angle of incidence to the relative wind would be greater, hence greater AoA, and closer to stall. It doesn’t really “know” what it’s being asked to do and doesn’t really care :D
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Still confused. It’s mostly because I’m unsmart, but bear with me. My understanding is that the main wing and canard both make positive contributions to the total lift, which should equal the weight of the plane in steady-state flight. If the canard goes up, the main wing will also point up, and assuming it does not stall, the increased angle of attack will turn into more lift and a climb. If the CG is farther forward, the total lift required doesn’t change but the fraction of it that the canard has to contribute should go up. If the CG is farther aft, the canard shouldn’t have to generate as much lift to rotate the plane off the runway or to maintain flight. Which of my fundamental assumptions is wrong here?
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
Aft CG means tail down, canard up.
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Not that familiar with canards, but just looking at the plane it seems like the CG would always be ahead of the main wing. Hence, as others have suggested, the farther back, the less lift the canard is being tasked with providing, hence it should be farther from the stall. Reductio ad absurdum, if you got the CG all the way back to coincide with the center of lift of the main wing, the canard would be supporting no weight at all. Conversely, if the CG was very far forward, the canard would be supporting more weight and flying at a higher AOA, needing less of an increase in AOA to get to a stall.

Unless I’m missing something, that seems obvious.
 
According to flight aware he has flown another .1
 
Certainly a much prettier pattern! Perhaps he's getting used to the wobbling and overall handling of the plane
 
Latest video:

He describes it as 'rock solid', although my impression from the footage was that there still might be a bit of oscillation there.

Big improvement on his first flight, though.
 
"Rock solid" is a bonanza or 210 or 182.. "somewhat flyable after a few turns around the pattern and you get used to it" - is a better description
 
Tantalum said:
"Rock solid" is a bonanza or 210 or 182.. "somewhat flyable after a few turns around the pattern and you get used to it" - is a better description
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Hey, it's an experimental airplane, and he's an inexperienced test pilot. Regardless of what I think of the entire project and the "design" process, I'm willing to give credit where credit is due.
 
He got his speed up over 105. Be willing to bet the oscillations were him stalling. Next thing is uncovering the landing gear and see what happens. The up to down transition would scare me.

I'm still interested in if he has moved the goal posts from what he had hoped. Didn't see any mention of his gph. Is there any useful left to fill it all the way up and still fly? Or fly with another person? I'd be shocked to see him hit 150 knots. But it definitely looked better. Kudos to him for that.

I didn't go back and watch, but the tab bolted on the left wing, is that not going the opposite direction of the aileron trim?
 
Is the upcoming gear retraction test something that should be tested up high, rather than in the pattern? What’s the “right” practice?
 
That left tire stops awfully fast. At least he won't have to tap the brakes before retracting the gear.

And I'm still amazed that he's not concerned that he's gaining almost 100' of altitude just rolling down the runway. I'm sure there's a formula that would tell how far off his airspeed is.

He's says at about the 3:00 mark "pulled the prop RPM back to 3,800RPM". That can't be right, right?
 
That he still doesn't have a reliable pitot static system is just mind bottling.
 
I know! I've been trying different static ports trying to get the perfect one and if I'm rolling down the runway and I see a 60' change in altitude before I pull back on the stick, I abort the takeoff.
 
Looked better will credit that! He probably should climb and orbit over the field to do the gear.
 
jaxcessnadriver said:
Looked better will credit that! He probably should climb and orbit over the field to do the gear.
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He doesn't have the heat sink/dissipation capability to run the engine that long at high power settings. Retracting the gear is way down the to-do list, IMO.

OTOH, as someone who thinks this project is a disaster, maybe the "out" for Peter is a failed gear extension, followed by a belly landing which results in the termination of the project.
 
kyleb said:
OTOH, as someone who thinks this project is a disaster, maybe the "out" for Peter is a failed gear extension, followed by a belly landing which results in the termination of the project.
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This seems pretty likely considering when he did a gear swing with wasabi it didn't work without human intervention to pop the gear in place.
 
NordicDave said:
Did I hear him say "I pulled the prop governor back to 3700 RPM"? Wow those blades are moving.
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The engine has a reduction gear, doesn't it? That's what I would say. He probably doesn't have a prop RPM instrument, so he'll pull the prop governor for s target engine RPM. You should see the look on people's faces when they hear me talk about my typical 5000 to 5400 cruise RPM. I don't know (without doing the math) or care about prop RPM since the gear ratio doesn't change.
 
Flt. 4 just went live on flight aware. Another pattern. .1
 
pilotrick said:
Flt. 4 just went live on flight aware. Another pattern. .1
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Well he should be getting a little more comfortable with it.

If nothing else, I just wish he'd address the pitot/static issue. None of his tests are relevant if he has no idea the parameters of speed and altitude.
 
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