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View Full Version : Bad Moller Skycar LSA story in LPW -apology



Dan Grunloh
03-30-2012, 03:07 PM
Hello Readers of LPW. I've recently got into a bit of hot water for a news article I wrote about Moller Skycar

http://www.eaa.org/lightplaneworld/articles/1202_moller.asp

It was very poor judgement on my part for repeating a news story widely reported in the media about Moller announcing new LSA designs. I was surprised to find it reported straight-up in some media outlets without including the historical background of non-performance of the company. I foolishly thought that Moller had replaced Jim Bede as the icon of that genre and wrote it up like a straight press release thinking everyone would recognize something was amiss with his claims. I was wrong.

Those of us who grew up in the early years of the ultralight movement saw many examples like this. Claims by designers of airplanes that couldn't actually fly. Most of those were far more convincing aircraft than the Moller's designs. We learned to look for actual direct claims of flight and for pictures with wheels off the ground. Within the last year or two LPW has reported on other new unusual designs that had not yet flown and subsequently have not been heard of again.

However, few companies in modern times has quite the reputation matching Moller and I was negligent in my failure to include that background information. The blame for this omission goes squarely on me and I want to assure everyone that I see every word that goes out before it is published. It doesn't get changed later by other editors. All the mistakes are mine. I encourage everyone to keep reading LPW and keep checking for errors in facts, or judgement. Thanks.

P.S. If I had included the drawing of the single seat Moller everyone would have been suspicious from the start. The two seater was just conventional enough to be believable.

.

Bill Berson
03-30-2012, 04:55 PM
You can call it an early April Fools.:D

The funny thing is, LSA has no provision for vertical lift.
But for Moller this is probably just another minor detail.... if his intent with this press release is to continue to scam investors.

Dan Grunloh
03-30-2012, 06:10 PM
Yes April Fool and I'm the fool. Incidentally here is that goofy single seater. Would you fly this? ASTM compliance anyone?

1765

steveinindy
03-30-2012, 07:18 PM
Why does anyone give that nutjob the time of day?

Floatsflyer
03-30-2012, 08:47 PM
Why does anyone give that nutjob the time of day?


If he was just a nutjob, we might sympathise and take pity on someone who was developmentally delayed, give him a cookie and ensure he was provided with the proper medical care. But he's not. To continue to do what he's done for 55 years takes chutzpah, boldness, very big smarts and a complete absence of conscience. He's a card carrying sociopath who could sell sand to the Arabs. He clearly thinks of himself as one of the smartest guys in the room....the same room that contains the Enron guys, the Worldcom guys, the Adelphi guys, the Live Entertainment guys, Conrad Black, Bernie Madoff...I could go on and on.

steveinindy
03-30-2012, 08:51 PM
Well, I was trying to be nice.....nutjob sounds better than narcissistic sociopath which was pretty much my assessment as well.

John McGinnis
03-30-2012, 10:50 PM
If he was just a nutjob, we might sympathise and take pity on someone who was developmentally delayed, give him a cookie and ensure he was provided with the proper medical care. But he's not. To continue to do what he's done for 55 years takes chutzpah, boldness, very big smarts and a complete absence of conscience. He's a card carrying sociopath who could sell sand to the Arabs. He clearly thinks of himself as one of the smartest guys in the room....the same room that contains the Enron guys, the Worldcom guys, the Adelphi guys, the Live Entertainment guys, Conrad Black, Bernie Madoff...I could go on and on.

Excellent characterization of a con artist who has harmed our entire industry. Thank you Dan for your comments and for posting here.

flyingriki
03-31-2012, 07:16 PM
John, he has developed a fabulously successful muffler design and made a fortune at that and real estate development in Davis. Sufficient to fund his never ending goal of getting this silly thing flying. What have you invented that made any big money? Who is funding your big breakthrough? How long in progress and when is it going to fly?

The media is the crook here, as usual, and they dig it up every few years for a 'scoop' when they are bored. Maybe like they'll do with your project in a few years...... Get back to the shop and spend your time making something happen rather than ripping another designer and hanging out in forums.

Dan Grunloh
03-31-2012, 07:24 PM
Hello Steve. I love your avatar. Really cool. All I would have had to do was add a pertinent fact or two after the jump revealing the history of the company. Not sure why I didn't do that. I couldn't have printed quite the terms used here, but still something was warranted. Why I didn't do it? I don't know. Maybe a subconscious desire to "tweek" the readers and I'm sorry for that. Every word in the article was true it's just that important facts were omitted. The fact is we read articles like this frequently in the general media and suck up news stories from the TV and the web that equally misrepresent the facts. We all need to be much more critical in this age of information glut so that 40% or more of our citizens don't find themselves believing fantasies that are quite easily refuted. I resolve to never do it again but ask readers to remember that we all can't know everything and sometimes we can make a mistake.

flyingriki
03-31-2012, 08:18 PM
So Dan, you got suckered and, as do many that try to make a living off writing and don't check facts before rushing to print and collect a pay check. Nothing new, but you look to be old enough to know better.....

Mark Calder
03-31-2012, 08:45 PM
Dan, That took guts!!

Years ago I started an ultralight company in Jim Bede's back Yard, Wichita Kansas. I lived in the same city he did , Valley Center Kansas. All of my local suppliers were all burnt by Jim Bede. One company in particular was owed over $750,000 dollars. Try starting a business in the wake of that disaster. It took me years of faithfully paying my bills to get up to 60 days of credit. Moller and Bede are really not one in the same, Jim Bede was a damn good designer, his downfall was building a plane that everyone wanted that he was not capable of delivering. Bede lost a considerable amount of his own money. That's a fact that very few people appreciate. Moller on the other hand is a pure snake oil salesman. He has been touting these vertical takeoff planes for over 10 years. His main investment appears to be artist renderings. When a respected organization like the EAA even mentions this guy, he is granted credence he does not deserve. Personally, I could not live with myself perpetrating a fraud like the Moller air cars. Designing, building and eventually selling plans for a product that puts someones life in danger is not a task to be taken lightly. I would expect that the EAA, which consists of designers and builders, would not only respect this, but would serve to filter bogus claims and information. Anyway, It took a lot of guts for you to retract that article, I personally did not realize it was "tongue and cheek" Keep up the great work!!

Mark Calder

Dan Grunloh
04-02-2012, 09:34 AM
So Dan, you got suckered and, as do many that try to make a living off writing and don't check facts before rushing to print and collect a pay check. Nothing new, but you look to be old enough to know better.....

OK I may deserve that but for the record it is incorrect as I have previously stated. I swear to you my first post is the truth. "I foolishly thought that Moller had replaced Jim Bede as the icon of that genre (non-performance of the company) and wrote it up like a straight press release thinking everyone would recognize something was amiss with his claims. I was wrong."

You can believe what you want, but I didn't get suckered. I've been around the block more than few times times and I sure don't do this for the money. I'm retired with a pension that allows me to pursue my hobbies than include aviation, music, horses, and gardening in my greenhouse. In spite of self-generated bumps like this one, writing for Light Plane World has been an amazing experience and something I never dreamed I would do (or wanted).

Dana
04-02-2012, 10:58 AM
Moller on the other hand is a pure snake oil salesman. He has been touting these vertical takeoff planes for over 10 years.

More like forty years, just look at the groovy hippie couple in the early flying saucer picture... even the current Skycar iteration has been around for at least 25 years (people were passing the literature around as a joke when I was working at Sikorsky in 1987).

MADean
04-09-2012, 06:19 AM
Anything Moller announces immediately earnes a nomination for my annual AirVenture "RIO" award. Given to the best new design, who's sole purpose is to "earn" enough money that the designer can run off to Rio.

John McGinnis
04-09-2012, 02:31 PM
Anything Moller announces immediately earnes a nomination for my annual AirVenture "RIO" award. Given to the best new design, who's sole purpose is to "earn" enough money that the designer can run off to Rio.

Now that's a nice public service. Make sure the trophy looks like a biohazard sign and plant it at their booth!


John, he has developed a fabulously successful muffler design and made a fortune at that and real estate development in Davis. Sufficient to fund his never ending goal of getting this silly thing flying. What have you invented that made any big money? Who is funding your big breakthrough? How long in progress and when is it going to fly?.... Get back to the shop and spend your time making something happen rather than ripping another designer and hanging out in forums.


Wow, nice to know where you stand with Moller, I guess. Admiring people who 'made a fortune' but always want another one (to work around their utter lack of insight) isn't something I do.


I have invented many things that 'made big money' for deserving people, and other things that merely provided criminal scumbags the Molleresque buzz they needed to fleece people; which is why I am more intimately aware of the myriad ways that evil actors behave in the exploitation of their employees and foolish investors. Telling truth is not one of them. These people eat the unwary for lunch, and I make no attempt to appeal to those who equate money with success. They're too easily mislead.


There are dozens more innovations in my pipeline, and I warrant every last one of them more viable than a showman's mediocre muffler... but someone able to confuse the pinnacle of misguided inefficiency with any of my work wouldn't know what a 'real breakthrough' was if it hit them.


For the record, our support comes from honest people who pass unimpeded through a simple filter designed to exclude Moller-types and all who find their appeal to greed attractive. 'Telling it like it is' (http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/lr17987.htm) is part of my responsibility to protect them.


We'll finish our airplane when we're finished with it, and naturally we hope to bring it to Oshkosh. I don't take orders from rude people, nor do I hang out with them.

jedi
04-11-2012, 02:09 PM
I'm retired with a pension that allows me to pursue my hobbies than include aviation, music, horses, and gardening in my greenhouse. In spite of self-generated bumps like this one, writing for Light Plane World has been an amazing experience and something I never dreamed I would do (or wanted).
Dan,
I want to thank you for your writing and say that I for one appreciated the Moller article. However, I agree that many of the less informed could be sucked in. Although I did not fully understand the implied meaning you intended I find this sort of thing an inspiration to reach for the dream machines that many of us aspire to create. The fantasy needs to be reported along with the reality.

Bill Greenwood
04-13-2012, 08:11 AM
Not so fast, all you doubters. I heard from a reliable source on late night talk radio that ex vp Dick Cheney and Ms.Condescending Rice have applied for a defense dept grant to buy 100 of these planes to look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Most exciting, they will have ground penetrating radar and also be useful in finding oil or gas in Wyoming. And by the way, don't worry that this program might be fleecing the taxpayers. In fact the planes are priced at only $250,000 each, not too bad, only a forth of what those mrps cost. There is, of course, a slight extra charge of another $200,000 for the ladder needed to board the plane, as well as $50,000 for the week long course to learn how to operate and maintain the ladder.

TIGHAR is also soliciting donations to buy one. Be the first one on your block to donate to TIGHAR Moller sky car Amelia search fund and receive a free piece of a lady's shoe sole that is guaranteed to have walked on the same planet as Amelia.

steveinindy
04-13-2012, 12:34 PM
The fantasy needs to be reported along with the reality.

Fantasy is one thing, fraud is a completely different one.

flyingriki
04-13-2012, 09:29 PM
That's nice John, insult a guy who funds his project with his own innovations and investments while you beg for money. Nice.

As for the rest of you with nasty things to say, when you rac your Ph.D. and teach at a major Universtiy, develop one of the most successful motorcycle and auto racing products of all time and develop a business park maybe we'll listen to you. Until then just troll on in the web forums and insult those that have.....

And yes, we've been chuckling about Paul's Skycar here in Davis for almost 40 years.....

Fly_boy_bc
01-24-2013, 03:49 PM
One day I was surfing the 'net and was STUNNED to see that Moller was still in operation and offering "pre sales reservations" at a hundred grand a piece. On a whim I wrote to them and called them the "biggest laughing stock in the aviation community". I found it really odd that some high level manager decided he needed to convince me otherwise. We exchanged quite a few letters before I finally had to say that my response to all that he had said was "HAH! I will believe it when I see it"....That was a decade ago.....No flying products so far......

Floatsflyer
01-26-2013, 01:52 PM
Flyboy, your ressurection of this thread appears to be amazingly timely. A press release by Moller just announced yesterday:


http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/moller_skycar_athena_investment_questions_208072-1.html

In some twisted fashion I gotta say, despite his ignominious history, you have to admire his determination, gaul, chutzpah(nerve) and complete absense of seeking redemption from past behaviour.