Raptor Aircraft

That first gear up at low altitude was stupid but not unexpected. Glad it don't go badly.

He appears to be continuing to gain confidence. Hope it continues to not bite him.
 
FastEddieB said:
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but it seemed reasonably stable to me.
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Much better than the first flight. It’s because of the tufts. A watched pot never boils and watched airflow never separates. :)
 
I saw 146knots on the tas! Almost as fast as an RV


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The GS seemed to agree more or less with the IAS in the videos I have paid attention to. He seems to fly on only very calm days.
 
Best flight yet I'd say. He still has cooling items to resolve and a host of other items but it's something. I'm amazed that he's doing all this alone, no external crews, no one helping.. really says something about him

Wonder what he'll do about the weight.. even if he gets this example dialed in he's got a fair bit of weight to shed..
 
Fixing the cooling issue will give him more flight time that he can use to test/correct other issues.
 
Tantalum said:
Best flight yet I'd say. He still has cooling items to resolve and a host of other items but it's something. I'm amazed that he's doing all this alone, no external crews, no one helping.. really says something about him

Wonder what he'll do about the weight.. even if he gets this example dialed in he's got a fair bit of weight to shed..
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As a stand-alone achievement I’ll give him credit. He’s been able to do something very few could ever claim.

That said, with the goal of kitting and selling the aircraft he really hasn’t proven anything or gained much. This is because the systems he’s “engineered” (cooling, some other stuff) will have to be completely redone to do anything other than fly around the pattern. This means new test flights, new calculations, etc. when you band-aid on top of band-aid indefinitely to achieve one goal, you’ve painted yourself into a corner.
 
Tantalum said:
Best flight yet I'd say. He still has cooling items to resolve and a host of other items but it's something. I'm amazed that he's doing all this alone, no external crews, no one helping.. really says something about him

Wonder what he'll do about the weight.. even if he gets this example dialed in he's got a fair bit of weight to shed..
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On at least one video, he has said he has help in Valdosta. Who/what/etc, wasn't stated.

He had a fairly professional crew do the fiberglass work on the airplane.
 
kyleb said:
On at least one video, he has said he has help in Valdosta. Who/what/etc, wasn't stated.

He had a fairly professional crew do the fiberglass work on the airplane.
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Years ago it seemed like he had a whole crew there.. wonder if he ran out of money to pay them or burned those bridges or some combination of the two
 
kyleb said:
On at least one video, he has said he has help in Valdosta. Who/what/etc, wasn't stated.
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I don't think he means paid help. Bill Clapp of Azalea was one of them when he first moved the plane there. Sounded like it was just by chance that they got to talking so Bill helped out a little. Sounded like a few others hanging around may have helped him out also. He had similar folks at Cherokee but one of them has said it doesn't take long before people stop trying to help him because he's so hard headed.

Tantalum said:
Years ago it seemed like he had a whole crew there.. wonder if he ran out of money to pay them or burned those bridges or some combination of the two
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Jeff Kerlo of Revelaero basically built the whole airframe. His son and maybe a couple other helpers were also involved. I don't know if it ended badly or he was just done with the part he was hired for, but Jeff has said some not-so-great things about the project and doesn't seem to like being associated with it.

Peter also speaks of his "team" on the west coast. One of them is Kevin Halverson, CTO of RPR Aero. Not much of anything about that company turned up in a quick search, but the guy is involved in several other companies, mostly look like tech startups not in the aviation field.
 
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Mtns2Skies said:
That it's flown this many times at all has blown my mind and frankly impressed me given all the bandaids I've seen. He can stay in the pattern as long as he needs to to work out the initial problems.
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Yeah but the testing he needs to do requires more than 45 second runs around the pattern. He did the first gear test in the pattern, and pretty late in the pattern if you ask me. What was his Plan B if something went wrong? He probably didn't have enough fuel onboard to spend much time trouble shooting. He hasn't been able to expand the flight envelope by testing stall or high speed characteristics. He obviously is just winging it, no formal flight test strategy at all.

As it's been noted before. He is just trying to fly the 40 hours off of it. He probably thinks once he has the test period flown he is done and can start selling.
 
midwestpa24 said:
As it's been noted before. He is just trying to fly the 40 hours off of it. He probably thinks once he has the test period flown he is done and can start selling.
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I think the jury is out on this. I hate the common phrase "flying off the hours" because (a) it implies that that's what the phase 1 test flying is about and (b) even people who don't take that approach use it often enough that you can't tell if they mean to simply fly around until they hit 40 hours or if they are using the phrase out of habit but really mean that they have a flight testing program that they will strictly follow for at least 40 hours and possibly longer as needed. Peter has said it but it could mean either thing.

The latest videos show a desire to fly the plane with as healthy a margin of safety as he can get within its known envelope and to gradually expand that envelope. Maybe not a perfect execution of that desire, such as raising the landing gear in the pattern with ongoing heat problems and minimum fuel, taking away any time or altitude that could help if the gear didn't come down on the first try. But the desire is there. And he does recognize that the flight envelope is currently limited by heat.
 
He has said he intends to use the EAA test cards...looks like he hasn't started yet. Too busy going on sunset pleasure flights to do real flight tests.
 
Someday he’ll have to climb above 10,000’ to legally test his advertised 300kt cruise speed.
 
231TC said:
He has said he intends to use the EAA test cards...looks like he hasn't started yet. Too busy going on sunset pleasure flights to do real flight tests.
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The test cards start with a fuel flow test. I hope he at least read the intro parts about the use of the cards. To me that had more value than the cards themselves.
 
231TC said:
Jeff Kerlo of Revelaero basically built the whole airframe. His son and maybe a couple other helpers were also involved. I don't know if it ended badly or he was just done with the part he was hired for, but Jeff has said some not-so-great things about the project and doesn't seem to like being associated with it.
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Thanks, I remember his old videos seemed to have a small team there

donjohnston said:
But maybe not something good
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Indeed. At face value it's a cool project, you'd think he'd have a pretty strong support base outside of a cultivated YouTube community. At the minimum I'd have thought the first flight would have *some* fanfare

Mtns2Skies said:
That it's flown this many times at all has blown my mind and frankly impressed me given all the bandaids I've seen
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Indeed. Although we've seen other backyard inventions fly and achieve momentary flight. Heck the people on junkyard wars made their little flying contraptions. But it does show his commitment to the project, however misguided it may be

midwestpa24 said:
What was his Plan B
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It would appear there wasn't one. From what we can see from the outside looking in his own worst enemy appears to be his ego. Why would something bad happen? Outside of a cooling issue the Raptor is perfect. He cycled the gear on the ground, why wouldn't it work in the air?? /S

iamtheari said:
But the desire is there. And he does recognize that the flight envelope is currently limited by heat
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Indeed. I am very eager to see what the final iteration of the Raptor will be. He seems to have all the time he needs, and for now at least some money. If he continues to chip away at this he'll incrementally improve the thing. The unconventional powerplant is his biggest obstacle at this point. If he moves beyond that he's still got a lot to work out with the plane itself. Would a craft like this require any sort of load testing or certification? The Wasabi guys found portions of the fiberglass work already delaminating, I'd be curious to see the structural workmanship after a few dozen flight hours. Many of the interior work appears to be a patchwork of "let's glue this here" and we still have that suspected potential flutter issue with the wings

He has a long road still ahead of them. But I agree, the last few flights were gradually improving.

PS, regarding the engine cooling, I thought I remember seeing on the Raptor side he was planning on routing engine coolant around the wing leading edge, using that as a heat dissipater and getting "better than free" anti ice protection from it: http://www.raptor-aircraft.com/features/deicing.html
 
He flew again an hour ago. Hope he's not getting too comfortable with it.
 
Tantalum said:
PS, regarding the engine cooling, I thought I remember seeing on the Raptor side he was planning on routing engine coolant around the wing leading edge, using that as a heat dissipater and getting "better than free" anti ice protection from it: http://www.raptor-aircraft.com/features/deicing.html
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Lots of people (going back to the Schneider cup days) have tried surface cooling. It ends up heavy and inefficient. Which is why it has never been used on a production GA type, IIRC. Beyond that, this is a composite airframe. Does he really want his epoxy/fiberglass/carbon fiber matrix to experience >200F on a routine basis? That could be a bad idea, depending on which epoxies he is using.
 
kyleb said:
Lots of people (going back to the Schneider cup days) have tried surface cooling. It ends up heavy and inefficient. Which is why it has never been used on a production GA type, IIRC. Beyond that, this is a composite airframe. Does he really want his epoxy/fiberglass/carbon fiber matrix to experience >200F on a routine basis? That could be a bad idea, depending on which epoxies he is using.
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We'll just leave it at "it's a bad idea" no matter what the airframe is made of. It's a complex solution with additional failure points to solve a problem related to poor adaptation of engine choice.
 
kyleb said:
Lots of people (going back to the Schneider cup days) have tried surface cooling. It ends up heavy and inefficient. Which is why it has never been used on a production GA type, IIRC. Beyond that, this is a composite airframe. Does he really want his epoxy/fiberglass/carbon fiber matrix to experience >200F on a routine basis? That could be a bad idea, depending on which epoxies he is using.
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But it's "yet another innovation first"!!
 
Actual Peter quote from today's video: "Nothing flew off the aircraft like last time, so all good."
 
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