Quote Originally Posted by rwanttaja View Post
Unstructured discussion like this is difficult for folks to answer, and difficult for the person looking for data to collate the results. Everybody wants more; more range, more speed, more seats. If someone says, "I'll give up 200 nm of range to be able to carry 2 extra people" and someone ELSE says, "I want 2' shorter wingspan and 20 knots more in cruise," how do you reconcile that?

What I suggest, instead, is to present notional configurations and invite people to express a preference between different design points. "1200 lb pax and baggage with full fuel, 1000 nm range, 250 kt cruise, and 6 seats," vs. "900 lb pax/baggage, 1500 nm range, 275 knots" vs. "Pressurized to 35,000 feet, four seats, 300 knot cruise for 2000 miles." Might get a bit more discussion going on it.

BTW, I'd drop "size" from the conversation. No one buying a $1,000,000 airplane is going to be concerned about fitting it into an old open T-hangar because the rent is cheaper.

Ron Wanttaja
The size is important for a few reasons.

1. It will allow us to hit our performance numbers much easier. The goal is 300+ KTAS at ~42gph. We believe that this can be done it a -42 PT6 with the size we are considering. If you go much bigger then you suddenly find yourself in a much larger engine and you sacrifice your travel efficiency we are shooting for.

2. With carbon fiber, we can maintain larger internal spaces while having not as large external structure like an aluminum airplane.

3. A large portion of the customer base we are shooting for already uses such T-hangars for their Bonanza or Cirrus. Thus they wouldn't have to search for a new place to store their airplane.

We believe that #1 and #3 are very important to making this product that much more interesting to our potential customers, #1 especially because it would keep their cost of flying the airplane relatively close to what it costs them to fly their Bonanza or Cirrus.