This AvWeb news bit led us on a bit of a research hunt. Air charter afficianados know that, if anything, the internet really is the private investigator's best friend. Originally our attention was triggered by the very forthright condemnation of the Russian publication that broke the story. Then we did a Google for "izvestia news eclipse" and it pulled up a link which had some pretty staggering claims. The most interesting of which was the fact that Bill Gates was actually designing the Eclipse 500. Naturally you can imagine the wisecracks that then followed at RSVPair HQ

It all started with this news. For the obsessive compulsive air taxi fanatic, news like this combined with excessive amounts of free time, a wireless laptop, a steady stream of martinis, and a vicious curiosity yeilds interesting results.

Firstly, we must commend AvWeb for publishing this news since it is a great relief that Bill Gates is not after all an air taxi design wizard. If the aircraft were to follow the development history of his now famously wonderful Windows(tm) operating system, there would be legitimate cause for concern never mind the inconvenience of the blue screen of death while on short final when in IMC.

But when we read this piece, we noted the people who had shared the photos with the Russian publication, MosNews. If one goes to EquitekCapital, you can see that Eclipse is a portfolio company of this bag of investments. So the next question becomes, "Well, the Bill Gates attribution is arguably a clerical error, but who are these people and why would this news even be published?"

Reading through the article in its entirety leads to one simple conclusion, no matter how fuzzy the martinis have made your logic - The Thought Plickens.

"Eclipse Aviation will act as the investor of the new project, which costs at least $80 million. However, Aviastar has already received 100 requests for the jets from businessmen who have even paid for their orders in advance."

The simple low down might be: Someone in Russia might like to license these critters, and hammer them out like Mig 21's at the height of the cold war. For those that are two young to know better, the Mig 21 was the Soviet answer to the arguably more adept American fighter planes. The logic being, "if your airplane is so good, we'll just build more of ours faster and hurl them at you in such volume that we'll win. (See WWII, the Eastern Front, Leningrad & Moscow turn around bitch slap and kick back.)

The request of aircraft by "businessmen" who supposedly have prepaid is telling enough. Whether true or not, it must certainly have the wheels at Eclipse, Inc. spinning in the CFO's head. License the technology? We never thought of that, but extra cash from an unforeseen profit center is never a bad thing no matter who think built the technology.