Innodyn mailbox full

It boggles my mind how a company that's trying to do something as serious as Innodyn is, can be so negligent about something as simple as updating their website more than twice a year, and emptying their email inbox!
I got sick of checking their website every few weeks never seeing any change, so I selected the optiont to subscribe to their email update service.
I just got an email back - permanent error, mailbox is full.

This is not good business. I bet a lot of people (like me) are finally going to lose interest and patience, throw up our hands and say "forget Innodyn" and stop paying attention. For a company that still doesn't have a product in production, keeping people's interest in their R&D should be a priority, no? I guess they're too busy to take an hour every month to clean-out their email and put a quick update on their website??

I think I've given up my interest in what Innodyn may or may not be doing with their time and investors' money.

That mail box has been full for a year...

I agree with ya tho! They're losing a lot of potentially interested folks by not communicating.

Not to worry Phil, as this engine has no serious chance of being viable in the experimental market. An RV with an hour and a half of fuel is next to useless.

Just to clarify, I was never interested in putting an Innodyn in my -9A... too expensive, and totally impractical. But I was still interested in principle... I believe that a better alternative to traditional aircraft engines may exist in principle, it's just taking us a long time to discover it. Companies that are doing innovative things and making efforts in this direction are important if we are to ever discover the better alternatives. It just frustrates me when big promising an exciting claims are made and then there's no follow-through. Why does Innodyn even have such a big flashy website with all these promises plastered all over it, if they're not going to take it seriously and keep it current to keep potential customers and investors informed interested? It's a big tease. Ask the people behind the companies that do this and they'll invariably say "we're too busy perfecting our product". Yeah right. I'll believe it when i see it, which I'm now believing will be never.

I understand that a new owner may be taking over this company so maybe that is why nothing is happening right now. We may be helping with fuel control system experiments involving a third party... who has a prototype.

I hope any new owners will follow a more realistic approach to engine development:

1. Get an engine on a test stand and flog it for many hours, working out all the bugs.

2. Get it on an airframe and work out the rest of the bugs with a lot more flight hours.

3. Post realistic specs on the engine.

3. THEN demo it and start taking deposits.

I wish them well if the rumors are true.

It is really best to keep your mouth shut until the first 2 steps are complete. I have no doubt the sales will be there if they can really do it. This one is gonna take a while.

engineers and computers.

Ok, not to step on any toes out there. If I do pardon my clumsy dancing steps.

Those who tend to be mechanically inclined to the point that they work toward developing new engine designs tend not to be too computer savvy (at least in terms of producing content for a web page) or, more specifically, too geared toward customer relations.

It is my experience that the more one specializes in a particular profession the less one knows about the workings of others. My guess is that the powers that be at Innodyn do not feel they can afford to spend time thinking about things they are not good at. Of course this is a very important reason why companies need to have staff tasked with this type of responsibility.

If a service oriented company is to provide service, they need to hire people who are oriented toward customer service. In all but a few exceptions, those people are not going to be engineers or mechanics. If engineers and mechanics are the only people that Innodyn has on the payroll, then they should rethink through some issues of their business model.

It is never a good idea to ignore your customers when in business. The real problem is that the notion of "customers" does not just mean those individuals or companies that you already do business with. It is much more important that a company communicate with their "potential customers".

It is my guess that those individuals that pull the strings at this company do not see this as an important issue since they do not sell engines to individuals. We are not their customers! They sell engines to companies. Their response might be: "Hey, we are communicating to the customers who buy our engines so I fail to see where we have a problem?"

since they do not sell engines to individuals

Click to expand...

If true, the marketing info on their website is hugely misleading. On their main page, right in the middle, is the text:

"The Turbine Revolution has arrived for the single-engine experimental aircraft pilot!"

And on another page:

"Innodyn Turbines are currently not certified with STCs for the various certified aircraft in the marketplace such as Cirrus, Cessna, Piper, Mooney, or any other general aviation aircraft."

It appears that WE (experimental aircraft builders) are their intended market! And VAF forums represents a huge chunk of us... they would do well to at least monitor the forums once in a while to see what their intended market is talking about.

It is clear that they don't have any engines ready for consumers at this time and as usual, the marketing is there well before the engineering and funding- completely backwards of course to a successful business plan.

Enthusiasm often far exceeds capability and there is a huge urge to get a website up to elicit response when no hardware is proven.

Do it, then sell it, not the other way around.

How can you answer tech calls and inquiries when no proven hardware exists? What do you expect them to tell you?

Many alt engines companies are guilty of similar stuff- amazingly low weight, amazingly low SFCs, low cost, high TBO etc., etc. Lots have not even run a prototype on a test stand before the marketing hype hits. It's really just silly but we see this business model time and time again in this market.

That is the past here so maybe the new guys will have learned and start over doing it right this time.

Hehe - do they even still have a web site?

I gave up watching them 2 years ago after I got one of their people to come speak to our EAA. This will be, what, the 3rd or 4th set of owners?

I have spoken in the past to the fellow who had the original RV on which they tried their motor. The performance did not equal an IO-360 in any particular, and takeoff with the electric prop was almost painful.

I'm a huge fan of potential innovations and I wish them well - but I have a strong suspicion this one is turning out to be snake oil.

rv6ejguy said:

I hope any new owners will follow a more realistic approach to engine development:

Click to expand...

Isn't the main point here that developing a small turbine for the experimental market, in the price range of 20-40 thousand $, is by itself a very unrealistic approach to engine development?

I think the reason for flashy webesites and raising lots of excitement before having a product is so they can raise money to develop a product (R&D for a turbine must be quite costly... as others have posted the alloys alone are extremely expensive). I don't mind this... venture capital is necessary and part of the game. But their website should be more honest, should probably be targetting investors (venture capitalists) at this point more than trying seduce naive customers into sending them deposits for products that may never exist, and at the very least they should be checking their email.

I'd think that most people with money to invest are smart enough to know that you invest in aircraft engine projects because you like aircraft, not to actually make money. If you are not technically savvy, this is the wrong place to put your money. They will need some deep pockets before getting this to market.

The initial numbers and timetables were nonsense- time to admit that and do it right from here on in if that's the intention.

If they get it working properly, this concept will sell itself- no need to market it. The cool factor overwhelms any reason applied as to why you shouldn't have this on an experimental aircraft.

I've had many companies approach us to do injection for their new super engine design which will revolutionize some market. Not one of those is still around in business today. Enthusiasm tempered by realism and a good team is required to make some of these cool concepts work in real life. This is a hard combination to find it seems.

companies like Inodyne are what make our hobby so interesting, common sense is what makes us buy Vans and Lyclone.

I for one am always interested in all the snake juice companies and dont want them going away. Maybe, just maybe one of them will really pull of some fairytale innovation.