licensing for homebuilts

"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 )

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 )