Agree with everything you have just said..... but to focus effort, the initial team have also created an Open Source initiative including a .org website. What we would like to do is get a source forge environment set up for the avionics side eventually and a resource repository for the plans, files and so on fairly soon. The EAA forum is not the best place for us to do this, but a great place to stir up interest and post progress! We still have some minor housekeeping to do and should be ready to open the doors in the next couple of days....
Yes! Working on a prototype now (from a well-known aircraft type), which is a 1/4 scale model.... I wasn't planning on making it fly because I have zero R/C experience, but someone in the team might want to do that.
* It may be prudent to build a 1:4 scale R/C model just to give everybody the confidence that the thing will fly.