To defend Eclipse is to be niave.
I watched them introduce the plane at Oshkosh. They put on a Dog and Pony show with mockups and were more focused on who was investing, than the plane. They had photos on the tent of the different investors to impress the prospective buyers.
As I walked out with a good friend, he turned to me and said " I feel like we just walked out of a Soyent Green movie set!" They were selling Kool Aid and people were lining up to drink it.
They had tons of money and used it to buy off EAA and aviation publications. Everything about the project was about promotion and spending money. They attempted to design an airplane with an engine that was still on the drawing boards. That alone was a very dumb move. The plane itself came in heavier than what they had designed for. With the additional weight the original engines would not work.
They then had to get new more powerful engines. If it had only been the Williams engines, why did they add more power to the new P&W engines? Then the wing area, the fuel capacity and other structures were not what should have been designed for the new weight.
They were computer geeks and designed around a computer controlled plane that failed and failed;
Then they blamed the avionics contractors. Nothing was ever their fault.
They promised the plane in the early 2000s. It was delayed and delayed. They used the aviation press to say stuff like "we are on schedule for a December 2006 delivery". (note: I don't remember the exact dates but you get the drift)They were not on schedule, but years behind. They used linguistic mombo jumbo everytime they had a press release. The early planes were no way ready to be released, but they did so anyhow. The sales numbers they quoted were false. They were part of the charter business that took many of the planes, so in affect they were selling to themselves without full disclosure.
It was not a scam. The owners really thought they could deliver. They lost billions on the project.
After years of watching and predicting their downfall, I got to fly one.
It was love at first flight. It was fast, easy to fly and super quiet. I actually dreamed of somehow owning part of one. What stopped me was the terrible MX history, AOG problems and the tremendous cost of parts and the economy the past 5 years. A person could be hit with a 100K bill out of the blue.
Then New Eclipse folks started almost forcing people to upgrade at many hundreds of thousand of dollars. The plane flies great and performs good, but I could design a plane just as good at a fraction of what they spent and so could many other people.
If you spend billions of other peoples money, you should end up with something that works.
My opinion is: Most people that defend either the original or new Eclipse have a dog in the fight.
Either they don't want to think they made a bad decision or they don't want the market to collapse.
There are a small number that had a good sucess with the plane and there are some that simply have their head up their anal cavity.

Cirrus owners were called the same thing... some win some lose. The more that try, the better it is for all of us in the end.

Where is the investors money then ?



Gee, whiz you take an engine designed to run for an hour and then to get vaporized in a nuclear explosion and hang it on a plane and you are suprised that it doesn't last excacly why ?

In addition to not having the durability required for an aircraft, as I understand it it couldn't deliver the required thrust either. If it was a just a failure during the first test, abandoning it at that point would be rather crazy.



You got to select your component subs. The problem was that they were not an aircraft company and bit off more than they could chew.
G1000 wasn't around yet, glass cockpits in higher end business jets were certainly already in use.

To defend Eclipse is to be niave.
I watched them introduce the plane at Oshkosh. They put on a Dog and Pony show with mockups and were more focused on who was investing, than the plane. They had photos on the tent of the different investors to impress the prospective buyers.
As I walked out with a good friend, he turned to me and said " I feel like we just walked out of a Soyent Green movie set!" They were selling Kool Aid and people were lining up to drink it.
They had tons of money and used it to buy off EAA and aviation publications. Everything about the project was about promotion and spending money. They attempted to design an airplane with an engine that was still on the drawing boards. That alone was a very dumb move. The plane itself came in heavier than what they had designed for. With the additional weight the original engines would not work.
They then had to get new more powerful engines. If it had only been the Williams engines, why did they add more power to the new P&W engines? Then the wing area, the fuel capacity and other structures were not what should have been designed for the new weight.
They were computer geeks and designed around a computer controlled plane that failed and failed;
Then they blamed the avionics contractors. Nothing was ever their fault.
They promised the plane in the early 2000s. It was delayed and delayed. They used the aviation press to say stuff like "we are on schedule for a December 2006 delivery". (note: I don't remember the exact dates but you get the drift)They were not on schedule, but years behind. They used linguistic mombo jumbo everytime they had a press release. The early planes were no way ready to be released, but they did so anyhow. The sales numbers they quoted were false. They were part of the charter business that took many of the planes, so in affect they were selling to themselves without full disclosure.
It was not a scam. The owners really thought they could deliver. They lost billions on the project.
After years of watching and predicting their downfall, I got to fly one.
It was love at first flight. It was fast, easy to fly and super quiet. I actually dreamed of somehow owning part of one. What stopped me was the terrible MX history, AOG problems and the tremendous cost of parts and the economy the past 5 years. A person could be hit with a 100K bill out of the blue.
Then New Eclipse folks started almost forcing people to upgrade at many hundreds of thousand of dollars. The plane flies great and performs good, but I could design a plane just as good at a fraction of what they spent and so could many other people.
If you spend billions of other peoples money, you should end up with something that works.
My opinion is: Most people that defend either the original or new Eclipse have a dog in the fight.
Either they don't want to think they made a bad decision or they don't want the market to collapse.
There are a small number that had a good sucess with the plane and there are some that simply have their head up their anal cavity.

I am still laughing at Tesla (the car, not the inventor).

Not really, G1000 does not control everything in the TBM 850 or other aircrafts.
Avionics thats about it.
Gears, pressurization, flaps, engine, fuel, electrical, deice are all seperate systems in the TBM and probably better that way. I dont think there is any G1000 that controls CB out there.
That control system on the Eclipse is crazy.




That's the case with all new airplanes. G1000, Honeywell Apex. The whole plane is controlled by the avionics. It's all integrated.They're all that way.

You got to select your component subs. The problem was that they were not an aircraft company and bit off more than they could chew.
G1000 wasn't around yet, glass cockpits in higher end business jets were certainly already in use.

Not Charles, but I see something very fundamentally different between Eclipse and your two examples.
1. Tesla created a short run limited edition R&D to prove the core battery technology. In addition, they did not attempt to remake all aspects of auto manufacturing. Lotus, GM and many other proven auto companies were hired and utilized for known expertise. The only radical technology was the batteries.
2. Cirrus was not as revolutionary as many people think. Fiberglass construction was well known. A parachute was used to short cut FAA testing to save money (spin and other tests completed a few years later for EASA after the coffers had a little cash in them). Each generation of Cirrus has only done evolutionary improvements. e.g. Add the MFD, then the PFD, then a carbon fiber wing spar, then dual ADHRS/ADC and reduce backup instruments...

Compare that to Eclipse. Eclipse was going direct to mass production, changed manufacturing techniques/technologies, engines, avionics... Did they leave anything untouched?

Tim

Mh, yeah by the time they delivered the first plane, G1000 was available in a number of airframes. 2001/2002 when the initial design decisions on the eclipse were made, it certainly wasn't a household name.

Mh, yeah by the time they delivered the first plane, G1000 was available in a number of airframes. 2001/2002 when the initial design decisions on the eclipse were made, it certainly wasn't a household name.

What everyone seems to be missing is that financial crisis was one of the major factors which did Eclipse in. Had the money been still flowing in 2008-2009 like they did in pre-2008 world, it's very possible that Raburn would have been able to secure another $1 billion in financing, worked out all the kinks in the avionics and other proprietary crap they invented, built up the tooling for mass production, and we'd have the Eclipses being made by the thousands by now.

As I often tell my clients, ANYTHING they want is possible... it's just a matter of money and time they want invest.

We seem to have lost Ken...

I thought the engine was based on some sort of nasa funded small turbine project. So tiny the parts were more suited for a jeweler to assemble than anyone else. Of course, this is stressing an already poor memory of mine.

Tyler,

My memory agrees, the initial Williams engines and a few other companies came out of the the NASA research project.

Tim