Richard Riley wrote:
On Fri, 29 Dec 2006 20:06:43 -0600, "Montblack"
wrote:

I always have fun when I bop in and talk with Steve, of ION aircraft. He's
bursting with enthusiasm, ...and airplane knowledge (history AND
engineering). He walked up to me at one of our EAA Chapter meetings and
said, "Are you Montblack?"

http://www.ionaircraft.com/
Check out the links.

He's building the prototype at our local airport - ANE (Anoka County-Blaine
Airport, MN)

The plane is really coming along. Very cool design. The craftsmanship is
outstanding: attention to details, material choices, innovative ideas, etc.

It's fun seeing what all goes into getting one of these prototypes into the
air ...later this spring is my guess.


Montblack
Steve reads r.a.h ...whenever he can steal a spare minute of two. g

Yeah, I talked to Steve a bunch when he was starting out with nothing
but the dust left behind by Dreamwings. It is pretty, and I
absolutely admire Steve's resolve, hard work and craftsmanship. It
looks like it will do what Steve says it will do, and in the homebuilt
world that's about as high a complement as one can give.

I have my doubts as to whether it can "succeed" in the open market. It
suffers from a common syndrome in homebuilts - doodler's disease. You
draw a shape that just looks cool, then you try to make it fly a
reasonable mission. You end up compromising your cool sketch, and get
performance that's adequate.

OTOH, his mission IS building something cool and sexy, something that
satisfies the former Dreamwings builders and actually flies. So he
may achieve "success" in those terms even if it's slower, more
expensive and takes longer to build than a (fill in the blank).

Hello,

Actually, the aerowork on the Ion was rather extensive for an aircraft
in the sport category. CFD was performed by AMI (Analytical Methods
Inc. - same folks that solve Boeing, Raytheon, etc. problems ......
there client list goes on and on). Moreover, the aircraft was designed
structural and system wise to reduce building hours. As always, a
prototype takes far longer to build as compared to a production
version, so I would not judge the build time by the time required to
build the prototype.

David J. Fawcett
AirBoss Aerospace, Inc.

PS ...... AirBoss designed the aircraft