Over the course of the weekend, new information regarding Honeycomb Aeronautical’s situation has come to light from both of the parties involved, revealing the existence of “counterfeit” Honeycomb Charlie pedals, copyright disputes, and other details.
Background Information
For those unaware, flight sim peripherals manufacturer Honeycomb Aeronautical has been in a strange situation for the past year or so. Many customers had been complaining about issues with the company not responding to their support claims, not processing refund requests, and not receiving their orders.
In January of 2024, Nicki Repenning, the founder of Honeycomb Aeronautical, posted a statement on the company’s Facebook page. The statement, in short, explained that he and his ex-business partners were having ownership and financial disputes that were severely impacting the operations of the company, and that he was exploring other avenues to continue the production of the long-awaited pedals.
Since then, Honeycomb, Aerosoft, and Nicki all provided statements that indicated that the pedals had entered production. During an interview at FSExpo 2024, Nicki even said that he was working with a law firm to work out the negotiations and financial deals necessary to retake the assets from the Honeycomb company, which is owned by snakebyte | GROUP.
Latest Honeycomb Management Update
In August 2nd, 2024, snakebyte | GROUP posted a management update on Honeycomb’s website that aimed to clarify the situation regarding “a former employee,” who “claims to be the ‘Founder’ of Honeycomb.” The statement went on to explain that the employee, assumed to be Nicki, was hired by snakebyte | GROUP in 2013 to manage the company, where he carried the job title of ‘Founder and CEO’ until snakebyte | GROUP terminated his employment in October 2023.
Regarding Honeycomb’s property, the statement claimed that Nicki, despite his job title of Founder and CEO, has never owned any part of Honeycomb Aeronautical. Furthermore, it claims that he does not own any of the company’s assets, designs, or other IP, and that he’s not authorized to represent the company. Despite what Nicki mentioned in the FSExpo interview about acquiring Honeycomb, snakebyte | GROUP’s statement remarked that the company is not working with him, and that it does not intend to sell Honeycomb Aeronautical.
Lastly, snakebyte | GROUP’s statement claimed that the Charlie Rudder Pedals being sold by Nicki through his website are not an authorized Honeycomb Aeronautical product, and that these pedals are based on “incomplete and work-in-progress tooling,” which its engineers improved to make the product last longer. snakebyte | GROUP’s Charlie pedals can be identified by the serial number, which contains the factory identifier “SA,” while Nicki’s pedals have an identifier of “RY.”
Nicki’s Response
A day after snakebyte | GROUP’s statement, FSElite published an article where they followed up with Nicki to get his perspective on the situation, with him even providing some legal documents and chat logs to explain where he is with the acquisition of Honeycomb, what is happening with his production of the pedals, and what the differences between his pedals and snakebyte’s pedals are.
Nicki claims that his company, Honeycomb Aeronautical Inc (different from Honeycomb ltd, registered in Hong Kong) is the owner of the copyright for all three of Honeycomb’s current products, and even provides some copyright certificates that seem to confirm this. He says that he is still trying to work out a deal with snakebyte | GROUP to acquire Honeycomb, but that snakebyte is making it very difficult. He provides some chatlogs of him with Marc Küpper, director of snakebyte | GROUP, where he discusses this acquisition and the manufacturer’s (Ryder Industries) involvement.
Nicki also claims that his company has the license to use the Honeycomb Aeronautical trademark, which was given to him after he made a deal with snakebyte | GROUP to pay off snakebyte’s substantial debt it had accumulated with Ryder Industries. According to Nicki, this license includes production and sales of the Charlie pedals, as well as the Alpha yoke and Bravo throttle quadrant.
Lastly, back to the pedals, Nicki claims that snakebyte | GROUP’s pedals are based on an early version of the Charlie pedals that were reverse engineered by the company, and that these pedals contain cheaper electronic and mechanical components than his pedals. He backs this claim with a report from Ryder Industries that shows the lower quality of snakebyte | GROUP’s pedals. Despite the differences, Nicki says that his company will still provide warranty and support for both snakebyte | GROUP’s and Honeycomb Aeronautical, Inc.’s pedals.
All images in this section provided by Honeycomb’s Nicki Repenning to FSElite.
Closing Notes
As with our previous reports on Honeycomb Aeronautical, this situation is still on-going, and there isn’t a clear indicator of what exactly will happen with the company yet. As more information is revealed in the future, we will let you know more about it. If you’d like to read more about the Charlie pedals, check out Asa’s hands-on experience with the pedals at FSExpo 2024.
