I had an interesting visit at Eclipse aviation this past weekend.  Eclipse holds an annual owners/position holders event and this year a buddy of mine invited me to attend.  I have been interested in getting a closer look at the plane and the operation and this seemed like a good chance to do it.  The 500 is in competitive space with the Meridian, TBM, and Mustang and certainly deserves a fair shake outside of the operational problems of the company.  I have made comments in the past about Eclipse as a company and Eclipse management purely based on publically available information. 
So lets start with the good part.  I think the plane is a decent idea from what I can tell without flying it.  I have heard lots of comments about how small and cramped it is, but it really isn't much different than a TBM interior and is definitely more roomy than a Meridian. It would certainly fit my mission requirement for size, payload and passengers.  Fit and finish also seemed similar to all of the other new planes I have reviewed and considered.  Having spent many hours in a Cirrus, I definitely like the side stick control as well.  I had a chance to talk with a number of folks who had taken delivery of their planes and without exception all seemed to be pleased with the flying characteristics of the plane. 
Now for the bad part.  I was told I would be able to fly it, but did not due to what I suspect was a bit of paranoia.  Apparently, my name was routed over to the "marketing and brand manager" instead of a typical demo pilot channel.  I didn't put it together until I met the guy and he started by asking me my name and if I ran the "VLJ blog."  Then started the paranoia.  "Are you going to write more lies about Eclipse." Huh?! That got my attention.  So much for marketing.  Apparently though he/they are aware of the site, they haven't spent much time actually reading it since the extent of my comments have been related exclusively to the business practices of the company and founder.  Based on Raburn's own admission those practices have left something to be desired.  Raburn mentioned in his talk that by their own count, they have missed over 400 promised deadlines. Most of the weekend's sessions were in some way about confessing how they had screwed up and what they were doing and planning to do to fix the problem.  Honestly, I wish them the best of luck.  I have always said the company and the founder are visionary and the reality is they have built a pretty cool little jet.  I really, really wish that they had made some choices earlier in the game like not trying to build a software company along with an aircraft company. Why not pull something off the shelf like a G1000 so we don't have to sit and scratch our heads about a Garmin 400 "FMS"? I suspect the same stubborn characteristics that explain that warped decision making also explain how they have managed to raise an unbelievable amount of capital. It is easy to knock a company sitting on the sidelines, but I just don’t get why they don’t focus on one aspect of an incredibly difficult process and leave the peripherals like avionics to a vendor.  The G1000 has been virtually flawless and has done everything it promised from day one.  It works beautifully in the Mustang, Phenom 100 and TBM 850. There is a reason it has now been chosen by so many aircraft manufacturers.  When I asked one of the techs about this issue he said Eclipse felt they could provide more functionality than was present in other glass panels.  In an ideal world perhaps that would have been true based on early projections, but it is clearly not the case today. 

Back to the paranoia.  It struck me in the accusations that Eclipse has become so paranoid of criticism and trying to stop it, that they have become distracted from some of their goals, not the least of which should be appealing to new potential customers like me, not worry about what the "bloggers" are saying.  Granted some of the most vocal critics spent some time in my forum area. However, some of the irresponsible behavior was moderated leading to the groups departure back to unmoderated territory.  The fact of the matter is this is a VLJ website not an Eclipse website.  The whole point of starting it was to encourage discussion of all VLJs since it is of great interest to me and apparently many others.