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![]() "Richard Lamb" wrote in message k.net... snip What would prepare ANYBODY to fly a Moller Air car?!!? Richard Brain surgery? The question is moot anyway. First, a Moller Air car has to fly! So far you couldn't get one high enough to even make the pilot nervous. Of course, the pilot probably has a right to nervous about all of that high speed rotating machinery surrounding the operators position! :-) Highflyer Highflight Aviation Services Pinckneyville Airport ( PJY ) |
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Not quite so. The Moller air car has flown, sort of, kinda...
I was looking at a picture of the tethered flights and thought I recognized the pilot, so I called him at home. The first thing out of his mouth when I asked if that was anyone he knew was "yah its me but for Christ sakes don't tell anyone or I will never get any peace". This person was employed at Moller for several years and was the only one who "flew" it. Few interesting tidbits of information. On several of the tethered pictures the obvious large firehose sized tether is slack, however the actual cable tether is string tight. You can only spot the cable in some pictures. The highest "flight" is what you see in the tethered pics, most were well under 18 inches of altitude as it became more unstable in the rarefied heights. He experienced a engine failure at about 12 inches altitude. This was one engine out of 8. He said it was the first time in 30 years of flying he thought he was going to die. It started hubcapping on him quite violently. He cut power and rode it out but was sure it was going to roll over or do something equally nasty. When he was there the engines were right out of second hand Bombardier snow mobiles. I asked about fuel burn and he replied I don't know we never measured it. We just put enough in so we could see we had some. I thought this was a bit strange and asked him again and he said he didn't know. I asked him again how they wouldn't know that and yet Moller was able to make all these claims. He said that Moller was the best he had ever seen at raising money and this data was to keep the investors happy. He claimed all of the money invested so far was 100% private funding and no government funds at all. And the reason he didn't know something as basic as fuel burn accurately was that in the years he was employed as the test pilot he had managed to log a TOTAL of just 3 and 1/2 minutes of time. He had a few other comments about the suitability of this as a viable flying machine, none being very enthusiastic. Roger Brain surgery? The question is moot anyway. First, a Moller Air car has to fly! So far you couldn't get one high enough to even make the pilot nervous. Of course, the pilot probably has a right to nervous about all of that high speed rotating machinery surrounding the operators position! :-) Highflyer Highflight Aviation Services Pinckneyville Airport ( PJY ) |
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