DarkAero Inc. Aircraft Critical Review Part 1

This is first part of a 4 or 5 part review of the DarkAero Aircraft Project by 3 brothers. Part 1 addresses DarkAero and censorship of input and does not allow critical or contrary opinions on their channel. It is critical review in aerospace the makes a better design. I have 34 years in aerospace, engineer, ATP, CFI, and active in kit plane building and EAA..

Although we have free speech, DarkAero Inc. is free to restrict and cancel it on their channel. This trend of canceling free speech, in all aspects of society is becoming popular. Free speech is our strength. Speech you disagree with is not hate. Now free speech is under attack it trickles through society and is bad for seeking truth and in engineering of aircraft. With that said I will NOT shadow ban (as DarkAero does) a comment that disagrees with the technical aspects or opinions that respectfully disagree. However if you make it personal I will delete and block you, nothing sneaky. I understand some people love this plane and emotional about it. Don't bring that; bring logic, facts, math, science, physics and examples. Thanks..

In aerospace, aircraft design. being closed off and making unilateral decisions without input from more experienced people can lead to poor choices. On the other hand aircraft built totally by committee can also be poor designs. There is a balance. In the case of great aircraft all had visionary individuals, teams and companies behind those great aircraft: Kelly Johnson, Jack Northrop, Burt Rutan for example. The three brothers are smart and it seems the older Brother is the leader and making many design decisions. They have a mission in mind and designing to that mission. Darkaero airplane is a tiny two seat cross country plane. Do we need another one in the market? There are many out there. They know that. Will their design be better? We don't know yet. However we can speculate and that is what I am going to do in this series.

Some DarkAero design choices may fall under overly complicated and why do that category. I will cover these in a later video, On the other hand this is a prototype subject to change. Although they are trying to build production molds to sell kits later. This may be a brilliant idea or turn out to be not so good, if major design changes are needed. There is a chance for the latter scenario.

These three Brothers have engineering degrees, as I do. The Brothers worked outside Aircraft Industry but had fascination with aviation and built a kit plane called a Cozy. This lead them to designing their own composite plane (DarkAero) and using better composite process and materials, than the wet layup fiberglass of the Cozy, which was a process popularized by Burt Rutan, a genius aeronautical engineer. Advantage of the "Rutan Method" is no molds are needed. Foam is hot wired formed with templates. However it takes a lot of work to complete the surface finish after layup. It also used fiberglass. DarkAero is using carbon. The DarkAero manufacturing process and materials are not new or revolutionary and geared to their home grown budget and resources. Never the less cleaver and thoughtful. Using carbon and preformed molds is not new in kit planes or commercial aircraft by many decades. It does make, strong light parts with surface easy to finish with paint.

They have made some interesting design choices, a few I like and few I disagree; one significant choice I feel is unfortunate. One critical choice will keep this plane from reaching it's potential, and hoped for estimated performance which I predict it will not meet. I will cover this in a later Part.

Later parts of this series will to point some aspects of the design choices. Darkaero does not allow any critical comment on their channel, therefore this series of videos is to address that. Intent is not to bash or disparage but is critical at points. The basic design is interesting but not revolutionary. It is cool but is it practical? The predicted performance with the engine choice is optimistic. The aircraft at this time April 2024 has not flown yet. I am eager to see it fly and wish DarkAero all the best.