If only he would spend as much time talking about the rotor system as he does about ball bearings.

Might have to think about cryogenic storage for the humble pie - don't want it to go off in the freezer......

You could ask Mr Hill to engineer a fresh one for you.
By the time he has reinvented all the ingredients, it should buy you a year or two :}

And it would far exceed the capability of any previous humble pie - he just needs a few £million to help fund the costs of ingredients......


There has been much made of the innovation involved in this aircraft and the reinventing of helicopter design and production - does that sound familiar to anyone with reference to the Titan submersible?

With all the Carbon Fibre and messaging, I was thinking the same. It comes across as the lovechild of Theranos and Oceangate.
Hopefully a bit more care goes into this engineering effort. If not, it will at least be a lot easier to find.

This thread is a classic Early Adopters vs Laggards in Diffusion of Innovation theory. We are fundamentally different people with different personalities & risk profiles.

Laggards: Will wait 10-15 years and finally buy one once their next Robinson 12 year calendar is due, and the guy down the road in the sexier aircraft, with half the running cost, 2.5x the range & payload is taking all the business. Won't listen to early adopters and will still come up with excuses about why they were right when it's 6-18 months delayed. Will celebrate if the project fails, then complain when their Robinson rebuild is due. Has an opinion about why FADEC DO178C certification will never happen, but needs help with their VCR (but probably built their house with their bare hands). Looks into the rear-view mirror about why it won't work, rather than into technical reasons about why it can work. Yet somehow ignores historical success stories such as Frank Robinson doing it with a slide rule. Does not understand why somebody would support a grifter; after all, they should come up with their own capital, not risk customers deposits. Even though they aren't one.

Early Adopters: Finds the project online after researching the incumbents and realising they are all crap, and/or too expensive, or massive trade-offs in range/payload/speed/cost. Watches a few tech video's, does some basic due diligence, and puts in an order. Couldn't change the oil in their car but may enjoy reading about turbine blade super alloy metrology and active tip clearance control. Understands that the guy who made the last five Rolls Royce Engines probably has it under control. Enjoy and/or tolerate risk. Happy to drop a non-refundable ￡50k to secure a slot & ￡130k discount. Don't mind delays in the program. Would rather wait and have something 5x better than anybody else in the industry for 1/10th the cost, done properly. Enjoy having questions personally answered by the CEO in AMA/Forums, and feel personally part of the feedback loop. Generally the opinion leader in their peer group on new and emerging technologies.

https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/g...2/theories.htm

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....557a012fbb.png



https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....2f0d53715c.png

There is some of that. But those early adopters also make great marks for a con, so willing to leap and driven by FOMO.
As a counter I would offer the hype cycle, and with Hill we are galloping towards the trough of disillusionment.
I have made my business from seeking out new technologies, filtering the good from the bad, and taking them to market.
I am all for change and disruption, but I know what is involved to innovate and make it real.
There is a fine line between BS and good salesmanship and if you can't spot the difference you may end up disappointed.

It's worth adding, I admire his commitment and conviction. The scale of this endeavour is immense and properly fraught with risk and the opportunity to fail.
Good intentions and ambition are good stuff, but it doesn't pay the bills.
Any innovator that has survived startup and gone on to change their industry has flirted with failure and, often, had to break many rules to do it. No industry wants to be changed and will resist any threat to their own livelihoods.
Yes, it is only money, you could look at it that way.

But when, if, it takes off there is much more at risk.
Something those last occupants of Titan learned the hard way.

Which is, as you state, a theory. Stockton Rush was very firmly in the innovators field and look how well that worked out.

I am all for advancement of technology but if I'm going to strap myself and my family into an aircraft, it will have to be well proven before I do.

If you want the 'He wouldn't listen as he always knew better' epitaph then please enjoy the ride on the left side of the curve - me? I'm happy in the middle thanks.

Progress at any cost isn't progress, it's Darwinism.

Problem is, no one here said it couldn't be done. Everything can be done if you pour enough money into it.
We said it can't be done in time, with performance and price it was promised at. So far, timeline has slipped and price has gone up (more than just accounting for increased supplies prices). Performance is still to be seen.

Going deeper into the carbon fiber issue, I see no consideration being given to the heat impingement from the turbine exhaust directly onto the tailboom. The adhesives they appear to be using are low grade/low temperature systems; not good. I worked on a composite tailboom program in the early 90s and one of our main considerations was heat exposure. We identified BMI resins as a solution, providing a heat shield would also be used. If you look at existing helicopters with metal tailbooms today, you will see many are now using heat shields for this reason.

Fly Safe, Always :ok:

If memory serves me correctly, the S-76 door handles are from a mid 70s Ford though I can't recall which model.

Interesting about the "Early Adopters vs Laggards" stuff

I predict Hill will get an HX50 off the ground, ie in a hover, (with a fancy video) around July 2024, this will unlock a further load of investment from people waiting on the sidelines.

I predict production will start in Jan 2025, but it will be slow progress, and they won't be making 500 aircraft a year for many many years

With a door locking pin that can be over-ridden from the outside but not the inside. Genius.

Crab So you wont be getting in a Boeing 737 then with its latest innovations ???????

I think any right-minded person would....

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....b987739811.png

Clearly you haven't been following the MAX debacle and all those that lost their loves thanks to self-regulation and engineering shortcuts?
Almost put Boeing out of business.

you mean where they took an unstable aircraft and applied an even more unstable software fix to it?:ok:

As you know there is a 737 sim in South Devon and they explained it to me when I took my son there for a birthday trip.:ok:

Yes, I did avoid the 737 MAX until it had been sorted. Again, innovation that cost lives because someone thought they knew better.

Although the Titan had been used a few times and outwardly appeared successful - the 747 if I remember correctly took a while to crack due to repeated pressurisation cycles - same as the Comet.

Hmm. I'm struggling to see which group you belong to ;-) I had to check that you didn't register for Prune the day after CRAN was outed. I'm sure we're all really pleased that you are such a cool, risk taking cat.

As you enjoy the AMA concept so much, has anyone asked 'what happens if the CEO gets run over by a bus or absconds to a desert island somewhere' and got an honest answer? After all, he is chief engineer/CFO/planning expert etc so probably pretty important to the process - a single point of failure is never ideal. CRAN did answer this once before with something condescending, but that was when he was active under his nom de plume so is therefore not legitimate.

BTW I'm not sure you meant 'grifter' in your description. Let's hope its not prescient.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....4864f94c46.png