Dave,

I hold five patents and have three pending in the field of flight
controls for helicopters and tiltrotors. But I have to give a lot of
credit for these patents to the very smart and experienced engineering
*******s that told me my ideas would never work (they did word it as
nicely however). In most cases their negativity was based on previous
failed attemps they had not experienced directly but had read about.
Further investigation, spurred on by the urge to prove them wrong often
proved them to be correct, but only for a limited set of constraints.
I was able to learn a lot from others failures and was able to take
advantage of technology advancements that we not available at the time
to make my ideas practical.

Don't let the nay sayers get you down. Learn what you can from them
and let them spur you on to try to prove them wrong.

Good luck,

CTR