I had a real world flight to Lakeland, FL awhile back and took this picture of a Piper Jet which I forgot even existed.
Not Piper’s greatest success story. It’s an odd looking bird!
I don’t think I even knew they existed.
I think on that little writing on the side it says first flight was July 2008. As Paul said not their greatest success story.
Now that contraption is not what anyone would care to call good looking…
I wonder how much weight was added to keep CG in normal.
I think it was the result of the initial race to get a VLJ to the market. Some companies started with a clean slate design (Cirrus for example), while others took existing designs and slapped together something that they thought they could get to market quickly. Piper basically slapped a jet engine on the tail of a Cheyenne, cleaned up the wings and called it good.
Wow, now I see it, too. It really looks that way!