Raptor Composite Aircraft

[Jet787]

No, he didn't promise beyond one. His website statement in writing was only one aircraft will be built and then a business plan will be made afterward. Those that contributed are dreamers gifting on a small chance of marketability, not investors. Who knows what the actual promise was? That is private. Peter is a dreamer/contributor as well with small chance of a return. He said "funding" will resume after first flight, presumably with experienced investors with a goal for profit but who knows? The open sourcing language implies there may never be a profit. Icon also overshot demand and has apparently spent four rounds of "investment" with no chance of return on investment, as far as I can tell.

Hi to all,
I was an early deposit holder (low 300s). Peter’s numbers were too good to be true but I figured that if he got 80% of his projection that it would be good.

BBenson, as to your post,
Peter did promise more than one airplane, he has promised 1500.
He has raised on the order of $2.5 mill from investors to date. Said investors were given a fixed price of $120,000 and a jump to the head of the line for their airplane.
Below is the fund raising email that I received from PM.

Xxxxxx,
If you have been following the blog on the Raptor you will know that we have been making substantial progress on the prototype with the fuselage starting to come together.

We now have 563 deposits in escrow. This represents over 400 new deposits in the last 12 months and we are still closing about 7 new ones per week.

Progress is happening on the engine and we hope to see it running on a stand in the coming months. The engine stand is complete and round tube for the mount will be getting laser cut in the next week. The belt drive reduction unit engineering design is complete and we will be sourcing parts for it soon. We will begin assembling it soon afterward.

We have ordered the main landing gear legs and they should be ready soon. The windows have been delivered and trimmed to size using the fixtures we created.

Our current goal is to have the complete the doors and frames in the next 4 weeks which will allow us to bond together the fuselage. After that we can begin work on the foreplane and main wing.

In order to continue this program at the current pace we are working through the current depositors list and offering a limited number the chance to further fund the production of the Raptor prototype.

This invitation is going out to those deposit holders between position 320 and 329. At present there are only two positions available for this offer.

The opportunity includes the 3 following items:

1) a contract guaranteeing the delivery price of $120,000 for your finished Raptor rather than just an estimated price. This is $10000 below the current estimated price of $130,000.

2) 0.25% (1/4 of 1%) membership in Raptor Aircraft LLC which entitles you to share in the potential profits further down the line. You will receive a Schedule K1 each each with your share of the profit or loss. You are not responsible for any losses but you can write them off on your taxes.

3) the opportunity to move further up the line if you wish to have your aircraft sooner. Position #xx is presently available to the first person to respond

In order to take advantage of this opportunity we require that you sign a sales agreement that I can forward to you. We then require that you complete your $2000 escrow transaction so those funds transfer to us and are no longer refundable. Lastly you will need to wire or send us a check for $18,000 which takes your total deposit up to $20,000 which, at that point, is non refundable and will be used to further the construction of the Raptor prototype.

If this offer is of interest to you, please respond via email stating so and I will schedule a phone conversation with you to discuss our program in detail. Alternatively, feel free to call me on ***-***-*** at your convenience.

Thanks,

Peter”

 

[pictsidhe]

Thanks for posting that.

 

[Jet787]

Can anyone explain how the Escrow works.
My understanding is that if the plane does not fly or worse the Escrow holders get there money back.
So what money is really being used to build this plane?

Hi Geraldc,
The deposit is held by Escrow.com, a third party vendor with a good reputation. I’ve used them before to purchase equipment. Both parties have to agree to release the money once deposited. The benchmarks are on the Raptor website. No money is release by first flight or any other performance events as has been speculated. The benchmarks are specific to your airframe. Peter released my funds without question or hesitation when I requested to cancel my deposit. The only money at risk was the $35.00 processing fee from Escrow.com.
Peter has funded the program by offer current depositors the “opportunity“ to invest. I was offer to jump from the low 300s to high 90s if I invested $20,000. See my priviou post for the email.

 

[Doggzilla]

"Split Canard"? I do not recall this term ... When I did a search of the forum, I only got this post.

I found this - Aerospaceweb.org | Ask Us - Missile Control Systems pertaining to missile design. The term is used where two sets of canards are installed with the forward ones fixed and the aft ones operating in the wake of the forward ones. The article says this is done to gain more maneuvering capability. To me, split canard seems a misnomer, these might be more accurately called tandem canards. Oh well...

Please show us the split canard you are mentioning and then help us understand what it has to do with the Raptor airframe.

Billski

Split canard is a canard where the front half is fixed instead of having a fully moving canard.

The fixed portion of the split canard causes a slight divergence, as pulling the nose up increases its angle of attack. The further nose up the higher the AoA for the fixed portion, as it’s aligned with the fuselage.

At a certain angle the moving portion of the canard can become unable to provide enough downward force to counter the fixed portion.

Angles of attack above the maximum downward deflection can make it impossible to recover. This applies to all canards, but split canards are especially vulnerable because they have the least authority and least deflection.

For instance, if downward deflection is 15 degrees but the aircraft has been pulled up to 20 degrees, full downward deflection will still be positive 5 degrees.

But the fixed portion is at 20 degrees with the fuselage. So it effectively has one elevator surface at 20 degrees AoA and one at 5, even though controls are maximum downward deflection of 15 degrees.

During slow maneuvering this can be easily countered before it becomes out of control. But sudden movements can cause enough inertia to swing the nose above a point where it can be recovered.

This may have been the cause of the unexplained Rutan crash in the pattern a few year back. Pilot suddenly lost control pulling a corner and it did a tight turn before impact. Engine was still running and controls showed no signs of obvious failures, so they never figured out why.

Low speeds and tight turns are the biggest chance for going too high on AoA and suffering divergence. So more likely than not he was already nose high and turning hard put it over the maximum safe AoA.

Out of control divergence is far more likely in high AoA turns because the wing won’t stall as easy at it would vertically fighting gravity. It does a tight corkscrew turn instead of going nose up and stalling.

 

[gtae07]

A neighbor, and professional pilot, performed a prop governor cycle in his Bonanza in preparation for takeoff. It did not return to normal RPM with the control forward. Repeated, same result. Decided not to fly, and started the taxi back to his hangar. He was almost there when the engine seized. Bearing failure.

There's a self-discipline involved in aborting/canceling a flight when you notice something abnormal/wrong on a preflight (just like for turning back/canceling due to weather, or going around). I've aborted two flights due to something discovered during the runup (I can't remember exactly what they were now, but one was in a rental C-150 and one was in Dad's RV-6).

Unfortunately, pressing on with an airplane that's acting funny and hoping it'll get better in the air (it won't...) is all too seductive. We lost a homebuilder at our airport years ago who decided to fly even though he kept having engine troubles on ground runs after maintenance. Engine failure after takeoff and he didn't even make it outside the fence...
I try to remember Leo as I think about planning my test flying...

 

[Turd Ferguson]

I thought all canards were "split" All the Rutan models for sure. Are there any aircraft that have a full flying canard? Mignet flying flea maybe?

 

[TarDevil]

He is still talking to RV6ejguy as recently as yesterday on YouTube

If you want to call it "talking." I call it condescending. He made it clear he knew more than Ross.

 

[SuperSpinach]

I thought all canards were "split" All the Rutan models for sure. Are there any aircraft that have a full flying canard? Mignet flying flea maybe?

The Rafale has a fully moving canard/control canard I believe if that's what you mean.

Isn't there two types of canards : lifting canard and control canard ? I think wrong terminology is being used here

 

[rbarnes]

$20,000 for the opportunity for "membership" to Raptor LLC .... and to share in the losses too ? WTF ?

 

[BBerson]

Peter has funded the program by offer current depositors the “opportunity“ to invest. I was offer to jump from the low 300s to high 90s if I invested $20,000. See my priviou post for the email.

Thanks. I hope these buyers of the non-refundable $20,000 deposits understood the risk. Could be a gift, not an investment.

 

[poormansairforce]

Hi Geraldc,
The deposit is held by Escrow.com, a third party vendor with a good reputation. I’ve used them before to purchase equipment. Both parties have to agree to release the money once deposited. The benchmarks are on the Raptor website. No money is release by first flight or any other performance events as has been speculated. The benchmarks are specific to your airframe. Peter released my funds without question or hesitation when I requested to cancel my deposit. The only money at risk was the $35.00 processing fee from Escrow.com.
Peter has funded the program by offer current depositors the “opportunity“ to invest. I was offer to jump from the low 300s to high 90s if I invested $20,000. See my priviou post for the email.

Thanks for that. Now I understand why Peter wants to get to production. I can't imagine what he's going to do if he's forced to build a prototype #2.

 

[SuperSpinach]

@Doggzilla

From the research I've done so far and with the help of people from this forum, I think that's not how canards work.
It's not about deflection but instead about lift generated by the canard. If you exceed max AoA, the canard will stall and the nose will drop not matter the deflection.
If the canard hasn't stalled then you can always reduce lift by deflecting the moving surface upward thus decreasing lift and allowing the nose to drop.

But perhaps more experienced people should talk about this as my knowledge is still limited.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

The Rafale has a fully moving canard/control canard I believe if that's what you mean.

Isn't there two types of canards : lifting canard and control canard ? I think wrong terminology is being used here

Agree, I have never heard the term "split canard"

Googled defines it as something other than a fixed stabilizer surface with movable elevator on the TE.

 

[BoKu]

Failing governors are super rare, still I experienced one during take-off
...

[heading OT]

In the Vans Aircraft world, there appears to be a rather high failure rate of MT prop governors made by Jihostroj. It seems that the flyweights come adrift, jam against the case, and break the shaft or strip the drive splines or gears. They have a couple of service bulletins like this one:

MT SB 31 - Van's Aircraft Total Performance RV Kit Planes

Flyweight failures

www.vansaircraft.com

Guessing that Diamond uses the Jihostroj governors you might have experienced one of those failures.

 

[TarDevil]

So, here's a rather definitive analysis of "split canard" aircraft by Ron...
Safety Is No Accident: Canards

 

[harrisonaero]

Jet787 thanks for sharing. It's good for sunlight to be on these types of projects so that investors can make informed decisions. This forum is becoming a place folks come for information so in the future we should assist investors with accurate design reviews. That's one of the issues with the Raptor project investment approach. People within the aircraft community didn't take it serious enough, me included, and they were able to get a bunch of investors before the word got out of the design's shortcomings.

In general it takes two key ingredients for good business: technical excellence and trust.

So many failed aircraft startups are started by "professionals" that have no actual aircraft design experience- typically computer tech types, RC aircraft designer types, or 3d modeling types. Successful aircraft companies, designs, and products are started and ran by guys that do such as: Burt Rutan, Tom Hamilton, Dick VanGrunsven, Randy Schlitter, Troy Woodland, Paulo Iscold, Craig Catto, Chris Heinz, and Bob Kuykendall to name some of the current ones.

And then there's guys that have experience but you can't trust based on their business practices and methods. Certain auto conversion companies, businesses in Florida, and owners that get arrested by the FBI tend to come to mind here. <tongue in cheek>

 

[flywheel1935]

Breaking News, ITS FLOWN, bit of PIO , but to be fair quite stable, BUT Mains off the ground at around 4 mins and wheels stop instantly, Brake Dragging ???
+ lot of flex in the u/c.

 

[canardlover]

First real hop . A good friend forwarded the link to me today.

 

[Doggzilla]

@Doggzilla

From the research I've done so far and with the help of people from this forum, I think that's not how canards work.
It's not about deflection but instead about lift generated by the canard. If you exceed max AoA, the canard will stall and the nose will drop not matter the deflection.
If the canard hasn't stalled then you can always reduce lift by deflecting the moving surface upward thus decreasing lift and allowing the nose to drop.

But perhaps more experienced people should talk about this as my knowledge is still limited.

That assumes that its upright and that it will stall before it becomes inverted or the aircraft is destroyed by the G force.

At high speeds it can rip the wings off before it stalls, and during turns in can corkscrew the aircraft at maximum turn rate (Get stuck in a turn that looks like a wine corkscrew)

In fact, the original prototype was so dangerous that the canard had to be redesigned. The new canard is clearly much better, but it doesnt mean its completely safe. Nothing is fool proof.

 

[BJC]

In fact, the original prototype was so dangerous that the canard had to be redesigned.

Are you referring to Raptor, the Wright Flyer, or ???


BJC