In November of 2007 I launched ExperCraft to the public. It started out as a completely free service and evolved into a voluntary pay system for what proved to be a very useful tool for many builders and restorers of aircraft.
My aspirations were to generate revenue by advertising relevant products to builders who need them, while providing a tool to make building and tracking your aircraft project easier and more enjoyable and automatically publishing an easy to share web site.
While the product did help the builders and inspectors, I found it very difficult to break into the experimental aircraft advertising market due to a variety of factors mostly around potential advertisers having small budgets, dedicating the ad dollars to shows, glossy magazine publications or other long entrenched advertising efforts.
I had to keep my day job, so to speak.
With the "pay what you want" system, ExperCraft operated at nearly break even for many years covering most of the operating expenses, with me covering the difference. To my dissapointment, I could not afford to invest in further development, as was my original plan. Eventually the software fell too many versions behind to be easily updated.
A recent update broke the system, though no data has been lost.
I'm sorry to you and the experimental aviation community that I have not been able to develop this tool to make it the success I had envisioned and that now it is suspended.
I will work to provide data dumps for interested users. I'll respond to email messages individually.
Also, I intend to bring the system back up, but in a better state in the near future. With my current financial state and work commitments, I cannot make any promises on delivery dates.
My more than 11 years experience with ExperCraft, including being a speaker at Oshkosh, attending dozens of aviation expositions and fly ins (with EAA, AOPA and many other groups) and meeting dozens if not hundreds of people from all over the USA and the world who were aircraft builders and expercraft users has been a rewarding and enriching aspect of my life.
Thank you for being an active member of the experimental aircraft community and keep going on your projects. The most important thing for you and the whole industry is that you make your aircraft fly. Finish it and fly it. Be safe and have fun.
Sincerely,
Rob
Please direct questions and inquiries to rob at riggen dot org