I’m curious as to how much of the development of the follow-on ground-up airframe can actually be done in Australia, though. To my knowledge the largest aircraft ever designed in Australia was the GAF Nomad, and that was more than 50 years ago!
Given the sheer scale of specialised engineering skills required, aren’t you going to end up having to have the majority of your engineering staff in the USA and/or Europe?
We were so close to buying an old Nomad for our tech demo! But we thought if we took it to an airshow, it would only get a small sub-set of attendees excited, compared to a Bonanza, which people seem to love.
We would really love to do it all in Australia and think Australia is a great place to do the initial development work, flight testing our tech demo and retrofitting the first set of our B1900D-HE product. But we would, reluctantly, agree with you that the SA-1 design, testing and manufacturing would be at best global but most likely heavily centered in the USA. Its our plan to grow the team in the states, starting soon, and slowly shift the center of gravity as the projects move through maturity.
I’m curious as to how much of the development of the follow-on ground-up airframe can actually be done in Australia, though. To my knowledge the largest aircraft ever designed in Australia was the GAF Nomad, and that was more than 50 years ago!
Given the sheer scale of specialised engineering skills required, aren’t you going to end up having to have the majority of your engineering staff in the USA and/or Europe?