Nick, I have to admit that the business side isn't my thing, but the thinking that brought me to my previous point went something like this:
Weren't the helicopters that we aren't talking about very commercially viable at one point, and remain relatively so today? Didn't they offer a significant increase in performance over the types that they were replacing, despite very similiar overall operating costs? If they were beefed up, would they have increased costs and decreased performance?
I don't think we disagree on what we want, and I know we both admit that throughout helicopter design there are compromises, I just think that jack stall was a compromise.
I'm not sure if there is any new product that suffers jack stall with systems operating properly, so the designers apparently have taken care of this.
Unfortunately I suffer the "demon of crappy helicopters" in other areas. When will we get the perfect machine?
Cheers,
Matthew.