Interesting to see the evolution of this thread. If you go back to about page 6-10, it's mostly speculating that the project is impossible.

Now it's materialised into a discussion about whether the factory gets planning permission and speculation of program delays, which are all true and rumour worthy, but people are missing the point that over 3 years and despite 50 pages of negative posts, there's now warehouses full of parts completed and we're probably 6-9 months away from seeing something airborne.

Interesting to see at each milestone, the negative nancies just move onto the next thing. So predictable.

I wonder what we'll be talking about in 3 years. "Oh look the first Airworthiness Directive - I told you it was a lemon". Nothing will change here.

Excellent, first flight by July 2024. That's brilliant news.

Production will start Jan 2025 and they will make 500 aircraft by Dec 2025.

An incredible achievement.

It hasn't met the milestones laid out at the start at any stage, it still hasn't flown in any form, the performance therefore is completely unproven and the costs are rising.

By any metric, Hill has not achieved what he promised to do.

He MIGHT get an aircraft airborne in the next year, it MIGHT achieve certification, it MIGHT have the claimed performance and it MIGHT be produced 500 per year - but so far just some glossy videos and lots of spare parts.

If you look back accurately you will see that most of the 'negative nancies' would like Hill to succeed but rail against constant overpromising and under-delivering

By doing so would destroy his main narrative how we are just a bunch of naysayers. You can't really expect people to sacrifice that much?

Obviously there may be more detail in the 'owner' videos but are all of these parts being pushed out being NDT, durability tested and production ready?

Or - at the other end of the scale - are many of them being 3D printed so they can be put on a mock up of an aircraft being displayed in 2 months?

I suspect the GOMs and the Hillievers have a different answer.

from facebook 2 days ago.

so it's flying already?

amazing.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e2f9c455a2.png

A demonstration of CAD power and precision maybe..........nice rendering

Not for me! Fixed price.

Yes, you as an early adopter made a good decision, but it still does not negate the fact that price is rising, which "naysayers" said will happen.
BTW, if you include lost profit that deposit money would have brought you (which might be irrelevant to you but is still a thing), because of the delays, price is rising for you too.

I don't know what you are moaning about. Jason Hill is an innovative disruptor that is shaking the industry up with revolutionary new practises and procedures. The hx50 will fly in 2024 and you will all be queueing up to buy one.

Personally I don't care about somewhat rising price if it delivers what it promises and if the HX (uncertified) is not more expensive than the certified R66. Ideally less. The R66 is certified and proven, with a huge support network; same with the R44. The HX50 has allegedly better performance (totally theoretical of course), a fully articulated rotor, wheels, powered wheel taxi system, allegedly cheap insurance (R44 is ~$12k/year), allegedly lower maintenance costs over time...

Good use of the word allegedly since nothing is remotely certain with this project.

Factory planning permission decision delayed again, until Nov 16th 2023

Planning Applications - Staffordshire Moorlands District Council

Latest AMA is up on YouTube. They're abandoning their original factory plans because obviously this idiot council were never going to approve it so they'll be renting an existing space, likely near/at an airport, and are negotiating with several possible sites.

quotes from Jason:

"we have taken a very pragmatic sidestep" (re: now looking for an airfield site to rent)

"....so at the moment we're we're planning to get these machines on stage for December and we've got a good degree of confidence about that and then we're planning for test flights beyond that and we've got a good degree of confidence about that but beyond that when you start interacting with the aviation authorities in 67 different countries when you're dealing with the scale up to production it becomes less easy to predict with confidence how long all of those intricacies are going to take so we're very focused on what the immediate goals are and I'm confident that we can deliver our immediate goals in the timelines"

"i'm fairly confident we will deliver this in the timelines that we're stating but all we'll do is tell the truth as we have all the way through the programme"

Watched 40 minutes or so before I had to leave.
Since this is the first AMA I have watched, I can't judge how much progress has been made, but it's still mostly collection of parts.

A basic no-frills new R44 now costs £500,000, and you have to rebuild it after 2,200 hours/12 years.

So I can see why he has got almost 1,000 orders

Anyone who knows anything about UK Planning process would have told Dr Hill that his factory idea was a non starter. Instead he has wasted time, money and effort on a pipedream.

But isn't this just a reality check for the whole project? The plan for the Hill Helicopter is 'blue sky thinking ': innovation this, GA 2.0 that, new greenfield factory the other. It sounds like Dr Hill has realised that it's all not quite as easy as he thought.

That isn't the way I interpreted it, he's doing the Environmental Impact Statement and carrying on with the original plan - just renting in the short term to allow time for the HQ to develop...
Although I aggree, getting planning for what he wants will be hard.
The parish council are actively doing everything possible to bog them down in red tape and complaints.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....1ea12d2f84.jpg