Re: Futura from AeroCopter Span
[quote author=Whirlydog link=board=20;threadid=133;start=30#msg1339 date=1070389096]
Outside of the AAI Sparrowhawk (wich is still in progress ) Why does it seem that all the enclosed two seaters seem to be coming from outside the USA.
Shawn
[/quote]
Well, there's the Barnett BRC 540, which is shipping (beyond which I know next to nothing about it). The RAF is only from Canada, it's not like it's in New Zealand to visit there. And they have (or had) dealers.
I think the basic deal is this: there are a relatively few people interested in gyroplanes. There are probably less than two million pilots in the world, and gyronauts are a subset of similar magnitude, I'd guess. On the upside, it means even the luminaries of the field are approachable. Maybe there are thirty thousand people seriously interested (i.e. building, flying, scheming, researching) in gyroplanes. In the world.
That small handful of folks exist in clusters here and there, usually around successful(?) gyro entrepreneurs, but those clusters are scattered all to hell and gone across the civilised lands of the planet. So interesting aircraft show up in Spain, Poland, Russia, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. None of them can really market well beyond his home continent -- very frustrating for people accustomed to having the best of world production in anything available from a local dealer or by telephone. I mean, how many of us drive a car that was made near home? Where was your computer made?
But, the distant manufacturers of gyroplanes can't afford to finance dealers around the world. Dealers, for their part, can't afford to stock aircraft. So if you are interested in, say, a Magni, you go to Greg and fly in his and decide you want it, and then have to wait for it to come from Italy. I'm sure Greg would like to have inventory on hand, but can't tie up that kind of money, and the same is true for any US rep of an overseas gyro, or overseas rep of a US one.
The small scale of the market means that even the most successful entrepreneur is usually scaled to fit. This means that he is one catastrophe away from dissolution (remember Farrington?). There isn't enough surplus in any one vendor for there even to be a decent market for worthwhile intellectual property at auction. There isn't enough surplus for decent R&D, and by that I mean real R&D with instrumented aircraft and proper flight test engineering. That's one reason that we still have debates about things like stability that should be settled, at least among the designers: the (scientific) literature is terribly thin, and many of the guys designing gyroplanes can't read it anyway.
The most interesting action I have seen, to deal with this intractable set of facts, is the set of actions taken by AAI (and by Jay and David Groen and company) to grow the market. Mind you, the CarterCopter is revolutionary technology that can not only change gyroplane flying, but has the potential to change the world. But it's the way that Groen/AAI plans to sell the gyroplane concept to people who are not currently in the in-group, that has the most potential for success. But there are no guarantees in life except death and taxes.
cheers
-=K=-
