Corsairacobra
New Member
Greetings to the HBA community!
The admin for the site encouraged me a while back to make an intro post rather than only lurk, so here goes.
I've been reading the forum here on various topics for several years now. But sometimes you want to see things that require registration, so here we are. No hate, I know very well how online forums function. Sadly I think that online forums are kind of a dying medium, as things like Discord have risen up to take their places. For niche communities though, or people who don't want to be beholden to a central authority such as Discord or FB (may Allah forgive me for evening mentioning them! Ptoo!) I think forums are still very relevant. Plus, I'm getting old. As for the name, it's a nice portmanteau and I think one of my hare-brained ideas over the years has been to combine the mid engine and inverted gull-wings of those 2 beasts into something interesting. All ideas guaranteed from here on to be Hare-brained until put into production and proven safe over many years of boring use, as a disclaimer. Why boring? Because when flying gets exciting it usually means things have gone VERY bad. As for my RL identity, I'm a bit hesitant to tell people exactly who I am, call it a general principle from the early days of online life in the early 2000's. I'm involved with running a small FBO in Oregon and have been here most of my life. A clever man could find me just from that small detail, to reference a movie line.
On to more serious things. Kind of.
I think (don't remember for sure) my first exposure to the HBA community was due to the whole Raptor affair. I was doing some research into re-drives and outside the box aerodynamic ideas, specifically belt drives and the bell shaped lifting curve as researched by a Dr. and NASA guy whose name is escaping me at the moment. This then lead me to some of the excellent work that @rv6ejguy has done over the years, after watching a few of his vids on the problems with Raptor. The conclusion I reached was that belt re-drives/psru's aren't inherently a bad idea -helicopters use them without much trouble-, it just takes a LOT of (expensive) engineering of that very specific thing to make that happen. More engineering than likely available to someone with my highly limited resources, and beyond the abilities of someone of Peter Mullen's much larger (at the time) resources. Similarly, the bell shaped lifting curve is a potential breakthrough in aero efficiency... if the problem of being able to utilize it throughout the angle of attack envelope could be realized.
That's been the story with many of the ideas that I've researched here (and the rest of the web) over the last few years: Good Idea X! But Y and Z are standing in the way and overcoming them doesn't make the cost/benefit analysis come out on the positive side.
I then realized it was due to a fundamental idea, which I believe (not sure) I picked up from reading Mr. Mullen's marketing material: General Aviation is far behind the curve in cost, efficiency, and speed. So far behind in fact, that any relative neophyte could come along with a good idea and spark a revolution in the industry. Caveat: this only applies to the Experimental world. The certified world is far behind the curve not because of a lack of innovation, but a nigh impenetrable mire of government regs, insurance industry reqs, and lawyers looking for paydays in the suffering of others. But that's a different problem, and MOSAIC is coming, though that is small comfort for anyone who uses certified airplanes for business. Like me.
Now, there is SOME merit to Peter's idea as a base assumption, depending on where you're starting from. If you're starting from say about 20 years ago when RV's were just starting to take off in popularity, then you might have a point. RV's are great, don't get me wrong, but from a materials perspective, and with a product more focused on speed and efficiency at the expense of some of the RV's well-roundedness in mind, one could conceivably see a large opportunity in the marketplace for a product that could go faster on less fuel with more room.
I think what broke the hold this idea had on me recently though is seeing what is coming out of Europe in the form of the VL3 and the Risen Superveloce, to name just 2. How is the average home designer going to beat getting 200Kts out of 140-160HP? And with ~54kt stall speeds like these have? I mean, you could maybe get those same numbers for a bit less money, but are you really? It would be really tough by the time all is said and done to even equal these performance figures and spend less doing it.
The aircraft idea I had was to have pretty much these same performance numbers as a benchmark and is something that (I believe) @addaon is working on after having the same idea: a mid engine shaft driven 2 seater with excellent streamlining, a liquid cooled engine to take advantage of the Meredith effect (another hat tip to @rv6ejguy on that fascinating work), and a four cylinder engine of some sort. Sort of like a Stemme as many have mentioned here, but without the sailplane wing and tail and the hide-away propeller. I still think this idea has a lot of merit, but how much performance and efficiency are you going to gain on the aforementioned VL3 and Risen? I think you can get better fuel burn and maaaaybe another 10-15 knots, but those 2 are already doing pretty well.
My next idea was, "OK, what if you go bigger? LS engine + redrive time, baby! If you can't go mid-speed with crazy low fuel burn, what about piston twin speed with (carbed)IO-360 fuel burn?!" The trouble there is, now you're into a much bigger dollar segment of the market. What if the concept proves too much for someone like me to tackle? What do you hope to do with it if it's successful? Sell all of your engineering and your prototype to another company for kit production as Peter hoped to with Raptor(I'm certainly in no position to start manufacturing things myself)? What are the odds of that actually happening? Are they greater than 2 (slim and none)? What's the potential market for such an aircraft? Even the good ones in this segment don't exactly set the world on fire in the sales department purely due to economic reasons, IE the dollar floor on aircraft in this class is necessarily pretty high.
This brings me back around to Van's. I read a quote recently here about Mr. Van Grundsven: he was always doing market research, even when (it seemed even to himself I bet!) he wasn't. Here's where the fundamental idea I referenced earlier falls on its face. Experimental GA is not so much about advancing pure performance numbers, the success of RV's proves that. Sales success is about ENOUGH performance for a given amount of $$, and about a set of less quantifiable things such as looks and status and community. But then, are you shooting for sales success? If you're just trying to prove it can be done, or advance a concept because you can, then is that even a concern? I would think everyone would like to be paid for their work, so I'd say it always is on SOME level, but I'm sure that's a matter of opinion.
So back to the fundamental question from earlier, is it based on faulty assumptions? I'd say largely that's true. The designers of today are doing great work, and the designers from the 30's and 40's did phenomenal work given what tools they had available compared to today. There may be a few forgotten gems out there such as Meredith, or maybe some underutilized aspects of aerodynamics that can be exploited, but it's a tough row to hoe.
For me, my latest ideas are more focused on the question of "Is there a market niche out there that could use a good filling? Maybe they don't even know this niche exists, until something is offered for it?" Creating market niches from (nearly) nothing has happened, though of course rarely. Right now all of my ideas are focused on radial engines. This basically centers on the nostalgia people have for round engines. Could you take advantage of those feelings of nostalgia but offer a better experience? Get rid of the hydro-lock, and the high oil and fuel burn? Verner seems to offer a good base for some kind of new design in the experimental world, and there's even a company that makes those exact mods to improve old Jacobs and Pratt radials for the certified world. Maybe there's an experimental to be made with a 300HP Jake or a 450HP Pratt? Hmmm. Make something like an old Howard or Stinson high wing but with modern industry standard aluminum construction, for example. Really scratch that itch people might have for such machines, but subtract all the pain of dealing with 80 year old wooden wings and fabric, and adding modern instruments and fuel injection and e-mags. Maybe? Hmmmm. Maybe.
Boy, for as much time as I've put into thinking about all of this in the last few years, I thought this post might have been even longer, heh.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and thanks to this community for providing so much expertise and information to the world.
Cheers
The admin for the site encouraged me a while back to make an intro post rather than only lurk, so here goes.
I've been reading the forum here on various topics for several years now. But sometimes you want to see things that require registration, so here we are. No hate, I know very well how online forums function. Sadly I think that online forums are kind of a dying medium, as things like Discord have risen up to take their places. For niche communities though, or people who don't want to be beholden to a central authority such as Discord or FB (may Allah forgive me for evening mentioning them! Ptoo!) I think forums are still very relevant. Plus, I'm getting old. As for the name, it's a nice portmanteau and I think one of my hare-brained ideas over the years has been to combine the mid engine and inverted gull-wings of those 2 beasts into something interesting. All ideas guaranteed from here on to be Hare-brained until put into production and proven safe over many years of boring use, as a disclaimer. Why boring? Because when flying gets exciting it usually means things have gone VERY bad. As for my RL identity, I'm a bit hesitant to tell people exactly who I am, call it a general principle from the early days of online life in the early 2000's. I'm involved with running a small FBO in Oregon and have been here most of my life. A clever man could find me just from that small detail, to reference a movie line.
On to more serious things. Kind of.
I think (don't remember for sure) my first exposure to the HBA community was due to the whole Raptor affair. I was doing some research into re-drives and outside the box aerodynamic ideas, specifically belt drives and the bell shaped lifting curve as researched by a Dr. and NASA guy whose name is escaping me at the moment. This then lead me to some of the excellent work that @rv6ejguy has done over the years, after watching a few of his vids on the problems with Raptor. The conclusion I reached was that belt re-drives/psru's aren't inherently a bad idea -helicopters use them without much trouble-, it just takes a LOT of (expensive) engineering of that very specific thing to make that happen. More engineering than likely available to someone with my highly limited resources, and beyond the abilities of someone of Peter Mullen's much larger (at the time) resources. Similarly, the bell shaped lifting curve is a potential breakthrough in aero efficiency... if the problem of being able to utilize it throughout the angle of attack envelope could be realized.
That's been the story with many of the ideas that I've researched here (and the rest of the web) over the last few years: Good Idea X! But Y and Z are standing in the way and overcoming them doesn't make the cost/benefit analysis come out on the positive side.
I then realized it was due to a fundamental idea, which I believe (not sure) I picked up from reading Mr. Mullen's marketing material: General Aviation is far behind the curve in cost, efficiency, and speed. So far behind in fact, that any relative neophyte could come along with a good idea and spark a revolution in the industry. Caveat: this only applies to the Experimental world. The certified world is far behind the curve not because of a lack of innovation, but a nigh impenetrable mire of government regs, insurance industry reqs, and lawyers looking for paydays in the suffering of others. But that's a different problem, and MOSAIC is coming, though that is small comfort for anyone who uses certified airplanes for business. Like me.
Now, there is SOME merit to Peter's idea as a base assumption, depending on where you're starting from. If you're starting from say about 20 years ago when RV's were just starting to take off in popularity, then you might have a point. RV's are great, don't get me wrong, but from a materials perspective, and with a product more focused on speed and efficiency at the expense of some of the RV's well-roundedness in mind, one could conceivably see a large opportunity in the marketplace for a product that could go faster on less fuel with more room.
I think what broke the hold this idea had on me recently though is seeing what is coming out of Europe in the form of the VL3 and the Risen Superveloce, to name just 2. How is the average home designer going to beat getting 200Kts out of 140-160HP? And with ~54kt stall speeds like these have? I mean, you could maybe get those same numbers for a bit less money, but are you really? It would be really tough by the time all is said and done to even equal these performance figures and spend less doing it.
The aircraft idea I had was to have pretty much these same performance numbers as a benchmark and is something that (I believe) @addaon is working on after having the same idea: a mid engine shaft driven 2 seater with excellent streamlining, a liquid cooled engine to take advantage of the Meredith effect (another hat tip to @rv6ejguy on that fascinating work), and a four cylinder engine of some sort. Sort of like a Stemme as many have mentioned here, but without the sailplane wing and tail and the hide-away propeller. I still think this idea has a lot of merit, but how much performance and efficiency are you going to gain on the aforementioned VL3 and Risen? I think you can get better fuel burn and maaaaybe another 10-15 knots, but those 2 are already doing pretty well.
My next idea was, "OK, what if you go bigger? LS engine + redrive time, baby! If you can't go mid-speed with crazy low fuel burn, what about piston twin speed with (carbed)IO-360 fuel burn?!" The trouble there is, now you're into a much bigger dollar segment of the market. What if the concept proves too much for someone like me to tackle? What do you hope to do with it if it's successful? Sell all of your engineering and your prototype to another company for kit production as Peter hoped to with Raptor(I'm certainly in no position to start manufacturing things myself)? What are the odds of that actually happening? Are they greater than 2 (slim and none)? What's the potential market for such an aircraft? Even the good ones in this segment don't exactly set the world on fire in the sales department purely due to economic reasons, IE the dollar floor on aircraft in this class is necessarily pretty high.
This brings me back around to Van's. I read a quote recently here about Mr. Van Grundsven: he was always doing market research, even when (it seemed even to himself I bet!) he wasn't. Here's where the fundamental idea I referenced earlier falls on its face. Experimental GA is not so much about advancing pure performance numbers, the success of RV's proves that. Sales success is about ENOUGH performance for a given amount of $$, and about a set of less quantifiable things such as looks and status and community. But then, are you shooting for sales success? If you're just trying to prove it can be done, or advance a concept because you can, then is that even a concern? I would think everyone would like to be paid for their work, so I'd say it always is on SOME level, but I'm sure that's a matter of opinion.
So back to the fundamental question from earlier, is it based on faulty assumptions? I'd say largely that's true. The designers of today are doing great work, and the designers from the 30's and 40's did phenomenal work given what tools they had available compared to today. There may be a few forgotten gems out there such as Meredith, or maybe some underutilized aspects of aerodynamics that can be exploited, but it's a tough row to hoe.
For me, my latest ideas are more focused on the question of "Is there a market niche out there that could use a good filling? Maybe they don't even know this niche exists, until something is offered for it?" Creating market niches from (nearly) nothing has happened, though of course rarely. Right now all of my ideas are focused on radial engines. This basically centers on the nostalgia people have for round engines. Could you take advantage of those feelings of nostalgia but offer a better experience? Get rid of the hydro-lock, and the high oil and fuel burn? Verner seems to offer a good base for some kind of new design in the experimental world, and there's even a company that makes those exact mods to improve old Jacobs and Pratt radials for the certified world. Maybe there's an experimental to be made with a 300HP Jake or a 450HP Pratt? Hmmm. Make something like an old Howard or Stinson high wing but with modern industry standard aluminum construction, for example. Really scratch that itch people might have for such machines, but subtract all the pain of dealing with 80 year old wooden wings and fabric, and adding modern instruments and fuel injection and e-mags. Maybe? Hmmmm. Maybe.
Boy, for as much time as I've put into thinking about all of this in the last few years, I thought this post might have been even longer, heh.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and thanks to this community for providing so much expertise and information to the world.
Cheers
