"Develop perseverance," is Jim Rice's advice for anyone starting out to develop a new jet aircraft with a new company, "or don't bother to start."The founder and president of VisionAire can speak from the heart. Two years ago, the Rutan-built proof-of-concept prototype of VisionAire's Vantage single-engine business jet made its NBAA debut in Dallas, and the company expressed confidence that its unique design and business planbased on the support of many small investorswould carry it through to certification.

Today, VisionAire is going to Wall Street for $150 million in more traditional finance, in order to build and certificate a revised design that corrects unsuspected problems in the prototype.

Nonetheless, Rice remains optimistic, and convinced of the merits of the single-engine design. After the company realized, late last year, that a major redesign was necessary, "we looked at four different ways to go," he says, including a twin-engine aircraft with Williams' new FJ33. "It would have made the fuselage a lot smaller," says Rice, "and our customer base cares about the level of comfort." Also, he says, "we have complete confidence in the JT15D-5."

The design changes that adopted, including reduced forward sweep on the wing and a wider-track, wing-mounted main landing gear, improve the low-speed and rough-runway behavior of the Vantage. Its wide cabin and short-runway performance define its niche. "It's amazing, the breadth of market we can draw on," says Rice: the Vantage appeals to owners and pilots whose current aircraft range from high-time Lears and Falcons to Bonanzas. The revised design, says Rice, is "a much better aircraft than we started with."

The revamped Vantage program will take some 30 months from full go-ahead to certification once financing is found.

The first new aircraft to fly will be Vantage Test 1 (VT-1), which will incorporate the aerodynamic changes of the new design. VT-2, flying some 19 months after the project gets moving again, will be an FAA-conformal prototype, and will share the certification test program with the first two production aircraft.

Visionaire Vantage

Apart from aerodynamic changes, the revised Vantage will represent a move back from "black aluminum" composite constructionwhich, says Rice, "was not the way we started"to a monocoque structure with large composite sandwich panels. The company has not settled on a partner to build the fuselage, but expects that Scaled Composites' spin-off, Scaled Technology Works of Montrose, CO, will stay on board as the manufacturer of the wing and tail components.

After the decision to redesign the aircraft, Rice retained the Tunstall Consulting Group of Tampa, Florida, to review the program's business and financial prospects. Tunstall's report was finished in early September and has now been sent to a number of "top-tier investment bankers," Rice says.

Although the company "gets new finance every day" from existing investors, to keep operations going, Rice expects an additional influx of money this month and next, allowing him to re-hire engineers and other employeesand to launch development of the new aircraft. About $90 million will represent equity in the company, along with $60 million in shorter-term debt to start production.

The revamped Vantage program will take some 30 months from full go-ahead to certification once financing is found.

"No one believes us," he says, "but that's OK."