Dan Nachbar of Skyacht sent the following e-mail to me in response to my
posting to these groups (rec.aviation.balloon and
rec.aviation.homebuilt). Please note that he refers to some attached
photos he included in his e-mail, but since these are text-only groups, I
am not able to include them.
=== Text of message from Dan Nachbar:
Greetings.
Somebody pointed me to the discussion of our project on
the rec.aviation.homebuilt group at google.
Feel free to forward this message to the group.
You are correct, we are raising the profile of the project a bit.
Although, this change wasn't part of our plans.
Our plan was to have the ****p flying before the big Oshkosh
air show (next week.) But record rains here in the Northeast have
delayed our work by about 3 months. So the ****p won't be at Oshkosh.
Unfortunately, I had to sign up to give a talk there long ago -- before
it was clear that the ****p wouldn't be ready. So I'm with stuck with
the commitment to give the talk, even without a ****p to show.
I guess our days of operating in "stealth mode" are about to come
to an end and I expect to be met with a good bit of skepticism.
And such skepticism is well placed. Most "great new
aircraft ideas" have a very high hype-to-aircraft ratio. That's
exactly why we've been keeping such a low profile. Most serious
folks, with good reason, won't take any new idea seriously until
it's off the ground.
We have in fact been off the ground, albeit on a tether,
a fair number of times this year. We're still tuning
the longitudinal balance and load-suspension system, so the
****p isn't ready for free flight testing just yet. We'll get to
that point in August.
I appreciate the comment about the less-than-convincing photos
on the project website. I hadn't realized how far the pictures there
had fallen behind our actual progress. I've attached a couple of
shots that show the ****p off the ground. You can see one fellow
acting as ballast on a line on the nose, a pile of sandbags in the
cabin, the cabin is tipped at a bit of an angle and the fact that
the bottom of the ****p is distinctly flatter than the top. These are
the sorts of things that we are working on before we can start
free flights.
I'll be updating the website photos soon.
Regards,
Dan Nachbar
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