Exotic Birds: The Adam 500

my business partner and myself attended oshkosh to purchase a twin engine aircraft ,with the option of 2 more in 9 months . we attended the adam’s stand and was talking to one of the consultants when adam’s fronted up and in front of us stated “get rid of those pair we have a lunch to put on .” I couldn’t believe how rude he was. In the end , we purchased 2 KIng Airs at Oshkosh and ordered 4 more in 12 months . What a way to treat people .No wonder they went under.

I actually worked on the prototype. I distinctly remember the engineers claiming that every surface was overbuilt on the testbed aircraft. Wieght concerns were always answered with "the production models will be much lighter". From what I saw, the sales and finance side of the business made a lot of promises without consulting anyone that lived in reality. It was a great concept and could have been a fantastic airframe. I feel like the whole project didnt know if it was a GA twin or a small corporate plane. Throw in poor financial management and you have a recipe for failure. On a side note, the one shown on diplay is at Wings Over the Rockies in Denver Colorado. Top notch museum with a good YouTube channel.

There are a couple of these things still around. One passed through the FBO where I work a year or 2 back. I'd never heard of the Adam 500 before so had to ask the pilot what it was and then googled it up after he left, so learned its sad story. Some of this was apparent at the time, however. There were 3 folks on the plane so the pilot was VERY specific about the amount of fuel, which was far less than filling the tanks. He also fussed and fiddled with various parts of the plane quite a lot, because they'd apparently been causing problems, and didn't sump the tanks after fueling because he said the sumps wouldn't close properly and fuel would constantly leak. I guess when you can't take much fuel and 3 people at the same time, and are burning fuel with 2 big engines, losing even a little would be a worry. Anyway, even before I googled the plane up, it was apparent that it was a bit sketchy. Still, it did look cool, though :)

I’ve noticed that as many of Rutans designed are hailed as breakthroughs that none, that I know of, have had a commercial success. Now the military stuff is something else. But I started building a VariEze back in the late 70 . I lived in Lancaster California. It was only a thirty minute drive to Mojave airport where Rutan had his factory. In the late 70s it was only himself, a receptionist and his cutting edge Apple II computer. I took my small practice parts out to his hangar. He inspected them. Gave me his critique. I started building the plane. It was renamed the (VariTedious) by the aerospace engineers in the area who were building it. Took very long on sculpting and layup with epoxy. By the way the Lancaster Palmdale area is crawling with aerospace/aeronautics engineers. Palmdale has the big aviation companies including Lockheed, Boeing, etc. the have their own private 10,000 ft runway. My father in law worked building the shuttle there. Edwards air force base was a few miles from Mojave airport, where a lot of private small airplane companies had their businesses. You basically had to be a sculpture expert. The epoxy system fumes were toxic to liver. You had to get liver tests periodically. I’m a retired pharmacist who worked for a time in poison control. I subscribed to Aviation Consumer Magazine. I started to see stats of accidents for the plane that supposedly didn’t stall because of the canard. The accidents happened because the guys were used to slow landing Cessnas and pipers. They approached too slow and tried to flare and land too slow. Guess what happens when you do that ? The canard stalls about ten feet above the runway, dips down to start flying then stalls again. Porpoising. Do this too low and the nose hits the ground and bounces up. The landing gear was weak. It would break and the STRAIGHT manual rod that was used to lower the gear would spear the pilot. It was redesigned with a crank action and no spear. Also when the porpoising got too bad the airplane would cartwheel down the runway….i stopped building it. Rutan then came out with the LongEze. Lower landing speed.

I'm all for innovation, but it needs to be an improvement over the old. The Beech Starship, another aircraft with Rutan involvement at the beginning, was hailed as a leap forward in corporate turboprop design. It was of composite FRP construction, and had a canard, and pusher engines. The Cheyenne 400 came out a year or two earlier (the mid-1980s for both). The Cheyenne 400 was of totally conventional design and construction, with an aluminum airframe, TPE 331 engines, and huge propellers. The 400 weighed less than the Starship, carried more people, and had a faster climb rate and higher top speed -- 400 mph. It did all that with a total of 2,000 hp, compared to the Starship's 2,400 hp. With 3% more fuel capacity, its range was about 20% greater than that of the Starship. Neither aircraft was much of a commercial success and are long out of production, though most of the Cheyenne 400s are still in service. Interestingly, the Piaggio Avanti first flew 2 years after the Cheyenne 400 and is still in production. It has a very large cabin for a corporate turboprop and has a top speed of 460 mph, faster than early Citations.

Adam was not easy to get along with and many employees moved on as quickly as they could find other jobs. That caused a talent drain and development delays.

How in the world can a carbon fiber bird come in at a 1,000 pound overweight bloat? Somewhere, an engineer really screwed up!

Worked for Adams for 5 years and returned when they were purchased after bankruptcy . The Russians had a sizeable interest as they had an order for 75 units. 2008 kicked them to the curb when they shut down their stock market in country for two week instead of an afternoon ,like here in the states, was rumored the company lost 2 Billion in those two weeks. When we went to the last afternoons hangar meeting they said " we can own the project ,we just can't operate it any longer".

Come on... The company had to have known about the weight issue before the production model even left the drawing board. That's just a waste. Thanks for sharing.

Interesting presentation, thanks. Failed is the past tense of the verb.

The introduction makes it clear that the Adam 500 was just an updated take on the Cessna Skymaster configuration, although it obviously has a lower wing position. A specification comparison shows that the Adam was a bit larger but much heavier, with much more power... yielding no more payload but a much faster aircraft. I wonder if a modification of the Skymaster could have achieved the same result?

My dad and brother both worked at Adam! My brother was with the team to take care of the aircraft during the filming of miami vice.

The issue of the weight problem should've been caught in the design phase and initial weigh in.

Great video

Excellent video... you could make one about the Lockheed 119/220 telling why it failed... Thanks.!!!

It is so easy to dream of a perfect aircraft followed by gorgeous renderings. At some point, the reality begins to push back.

I have had the honor to fly in one. Talk about ramp appeal.

It was pretty clear from the beginning that this project was vaporware, the developers were earnest and honest, but it was clear that they were promising too much too soon, and didn’t have the resources to get there…. As happens with so many “revolutionary” aircraft projects…

Thank you for an excellent documentary. I wondered what happened to that beautiful bird. Nice job. I couldn't help wonder why the Russians didn't just slap a couple of PT6A's on the thing and make it a real airplane. 550shp x 2 would have made it a slick ship and it would have still had the inline thrust advantage.

Super cool.