[geff82]

Just a quick look at the design reveals the rear wheels are nowhere near the center of gravtity. This is important if you want to rotate on take off at reasonable speeds and land smoothly. He should know such basic stuff if he really flies for a living. Also the engine lacks cooling obviously. Cant‘t take such stories serious, as in some way they discredit real Indian engineers who build stuff, including planes, that are much more refined than this comedy. On a nerd level of course, I think I like this guy for not caring and just trying. Then again the article is framed as if he was some kind of bright example for India.

[cpncrunch]

Not sure how you can tell the cofg just by looking at it. Looks to me like theyre in roughly the correct position. I wonder if the engine is watercooled.

[wanderingjew]

Because the CoG should be about 1/3 to 1/2 of a chord from the leading edge of the wing. This is a bit harder to eyeball with swept wings, but yes, it really looks like this thing is going to have some trouble rotating.

Is the builder doing something different that would change this? I don't know. The nose of the plane looks a little 'long' if he's using a piston engine as the article suggests, and I don't see any pitots sticking out. It looks like a plane, but there are some weird details that just don't make sense.

The proof in the plane is in the flying, and according to the article, this plane never flew. I'd really like to see a flight test before giving this guy credit for building a plane.

[tim333]

It's also where the tail is compared to the main wheels. When you want to take off the pilot moves the elevator on the tail which pushes the tail down causing the nose to lift up pivoting on the rear wheels. If you look at a pic of a normal plane https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Cessna.f... you don't have to push down too hard on the tail to lift the nose.

In the Indian guys design the tail is closer to the wheels and the engine sticks out a lot in front so you'd need a lot of force https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/14A54/producti...

It might still take off but you'd need to be quite fast to get enough downforce on the tail. I wonder if they'll get to try.

There's video of him driving it quite fast down the runway: https://youtu.be/1dLAmhDWEE8?t=27s

[cpncrunch]

Have you ever seen a 150 in real life? There's nothing in the tailcone. If you had a battery and some avionics boxes in there, the you could probably move the tail a few feet towards the front to achieve the same moment.

You simply can't guess the balance from a picture.

[tim333]

I learnt to fly in a 150. Yeah you can't tell exactly where the balance is from a picture and it depends where you've put the luggage and so on.

Edit: Pausing the video at 32s it seems he's pulled back on the stick and managed to lift the front wheel a few inches https://youtu.be/1dLAmhDWEE8

[topspin]

He fully deflected the elevator and bounced the nose gear. With zero passengers. You put 6 adults and a co-pilot forward of the rear gear and I bet even bouncing will be out of the question. But we don't know if the ground speed was even representative of take off, so we're all just guessing here. With regard to cooling you can see an evolution here in the BBC photos: the first two images show no cooling ducts on either side of the TAC-003 engine compartment, but later images show several. I think geff82 is probably spot on about the design.

[igravious]

He should publish his schematics online. They should allow him to test it. If he dies, so be it. That Virgin Galactic pilot died – testing aeronautical prototypes is dangerous. Just because it is dangerous doesn't mean you have to prevent every maverick from trying. Of course, he should fly it himself and not get someone else to test it. Also, he should just fly it surreptitiously, if he's that confident.

[olympus]

It's not just himself he is putting in danger. There are people surrounding the airport that could be hurt in a crash. If he were able to go to an airport with no people around then it could be safe. I'm not very familiar with India's geography, but I doubt he could easily find an airport that isn't surrounded by people.

The Virgin Galactic crash was during an approved test flight from the FAA. That means that the FSDO (flight standards district office) was satisfied with their design process and believed that they had taken necessary precautions (like testing it in the desert). The VG plane was designed by a team of engineers, and this plane was designed by a pilot (contrary to popular belief, pilots are not all-knowing).

India has a similar requirement, and their regulators say this guy doesn't meet the standards. Is it because of corruption? Is it because of incompetency and being unwilling to waste their time to examine his plane? Or is it because they looked at it and know that his design is actually unsafe?

I don't know the real answer. The article claims they aren't giving him a fair shake. There are convincing arguments in this thread that the plane won't fly well.

[kranner]

> I'm not very familiar with India's geography, but I doubt he could easily find an airport that isn't surrounded by people.

It is currently parked at Mumbai airport, which is surrounded by Dharavi: an extremely densely populated area. According to Wikipedia, Dharavi has a population density of over 277,136 people per sq km.

[tw1010]

Yeah, the parents post smells suspiciously of alternative, possibly prejudiced, motives. We have no idea about the density distribution of the plane to say where the center of gravity is.

[kurthr]

If you put the main center of lift (wings) offset from the center of mass, you will have a VERY difficult time flying!