Originally Posted by
Hughes500
I actually had an hours conversation with Jason last week, interesting we were talking hinge offsets as to what was the best helicopter in turbulence, comparing 350 to 341 to 269 and 369. Without doubt the 369 rides turbulence way better.
As for engines, what everyone has to bear in mind a turbine engine is actually very cheap to make despite what the OEM's tell us. A compressor wheel in a RR 250 costs around £ 180 for a manufacturer to make, with his margin on it. Jason is actually setting up the manufacture of the parts rather than relying on 3 rd parties. Crab yes the war does make a difference, where does just about all the world's titanium come from? , I will let you find out.
It is typical of this woke country we live in where we always want to run down people who are doing well, most of you should go and work for the BBC and continue to run anything GB down. Of course there are going to be problems but come on guys !
He has taken lots of orders from people who have done a lot of due diligence on the company and are happy to put their money down, dont see too many manufactures having an order book like his !
If that is the case, where is the working engine? IIRC, he promised some quite revolutionary numbers on fuel consumption, meaning his engine is not off-the-shelf one, which in turn means there has to be some testing because I don't know of a single project that worked right off the bat.
While I appreciate that CAD programing can considerably speed things up, that engine needs to be bench tested, fitted into airframe, ground tested as a whole and only then flown. A lot of things to do with only 8 months to go.
It's not that I am against the idea of "cheap" helicopter, I am more for under-promise and over-deliver approach. Will this helicopter get in the air? Probably. On price point and time schedule? Probably not.