Flying Car (and 0-60 in less than 4 seconds!)
eaavideo.org
eaavideo.org
Cars are not as reliable as aircraft because they're not maintained as well, and the operators are far less disciplined.
It is generally accepted that small aircraft aviation is generally 10x less safe than driving on both a passenger-mile and per-trip basis. And most small aircraft are flown for recreation, not transportation. When you fly for transportation there is a need to get from point A to point B on some reasonable schedule, which pressures the pilot to take all kinds of risks with weather, maintenance, etc. And that's for a rigorously licensed pilot. I doubt that the pilots that fly this thing will be up to the quality of even your average Cessna pilot.
Combine these two factors, and you have a flying coffin. I would not be comfortable living within even a hundred miles of one of these.
I suppose there's a good feeling that comes from pointing out perceived flaws and problems in things, or from treating emerging inventions as though they were fully commercialized products.
I can only imagine what erstwhile tech forums would have read like if they'd been around when Edison was churning out ideas at Menlo Park, or if there had been internet commenters looking over Marconi's shoulder, or Bell's.
Auto drivers take the same kind of weather and maintenance risks when trying to conform to a schedule (when is the last time you went over 55mph on the 101 in the rain to catch a flight?). GxP for pilot training and cockpit management implore a "Safety First" approach, but it all still comes down to pilot decision making (which must be distinguished from "licensing rigor").
"Motorcycle with a parachute" is a pretty good way to describe this (although really it's a dune-buggy with a parachute--it has a roll cage and seatbelts). Looks less dangerous than a fixed-wing aircraft for the pilot and passengers (parachute landing at very slow speeds). Certainly less dangerous for the human and other "obstacles." So, low risk to you (less than your neighbor's SUV, for sure).
"Soon they decided to try the bucket drop, a technique Dad had developed to deliver and retrieve items from missionaries who had no airstrip. He circled his plane overhead in tight circles while a long cord with the goods attached was reeled out behind the plane. Air friction on the basket at the end of the line would make the cord cut to the inside of the circle flown by the airplane, while the weight of the basket caused the cord to fall. When enough line was extended behind the plane, the end of the line would actually hang motionless in the air. Letting out more line at that point would make the line drop straight down where it could be made to hover just above the ground."
I have never before heard of this technique. Sounds like it would take a lot of experience to make it work. Very cool.
What we want to do is develop a commercial market. Sell it
to people up here for whatever they want to do with it. So
we can get the quantity up so we can get the cost down so
we can serve the humanitarian missions market which is our
primary market.
The end result was noble in that you were contributing to charity. But the way they did it made me feel like they were gouging people.
Granted, it's a really cool demo, but he needs to admit that there is little real-world practicality.
I think he should play up the fact that this takes off with half the speed Marty McFly would need to turn on his flux capacitor.
He said it could take off from a football field and clear the stanchions. It evidently needs a 300 foot unpaved field and a bit of space around it without anything exceedingly tall. That's pretty good performance, and you can get by with a lot less than a proper runway, but it can't take off from a traffic jam.
Luckily the guy was apparently envisioning usecases for medical and rescue team, mostly.
Looks great for the emergency services market he's aiming at, but for the consumer market he wants to target to help get things moving - scary stuff.
I also thought about the props when he was just driving round, I don't know what laws are like in the USA but if you are caught with a lump of wood sticking out the back of the car in the UK then you get pulled over, never mind 6 x 3 foot knives!
Takeoff and landing is the risky time, and that is mitigated by the timing - it takes seconds to land this thing (100 yd airstrip) so you'd have to attempt to land at the same moment as someone else which is in your favor.
It would be like frequencies too, you would only be able to fly in a limited amount of "space". The rest would be reserved for airplanes and helicopters.
It's only the same as airplanes having to follow flight paths, there would be directions that car-o-planes could go in.
I know what you are saying but imagine London or New York with flying cars everywhere. The end result would really be no different. Concentrated areas with millions of cars flying in it.
Although... http://www.firebox.com/product/415/Moller-Skycar-M400
(Assuming it costs less than a small plane, which I imagine it does, and can carry an extra person reasonably.)
He says it needs about 300 feet to take off and land--any decent bush pilot can do that with the right plane, and the best can do far better[1]. A used bush plane probably costs about the same as one of these things, and you can go several times faster than 40 mph. You could carry a lot more stuff, too.
But what if the landing strip is any significant distance from the place you're trying to get to? Well, if all of the terrain in-between is unsuitable for landing (forest, jugle, or just plain rugged), it's probably too rough for a tiny little car like this, too. Even if you [i]could[/i] use the car mode to go that last mile or so, it would still probably be faster to fly the first several hundred miles of the trip in a bush plane and then go the last bit on foot (or mule, etc.) rather than fly the first part at 40 mph and drive the last bit.
If you're talking about shorter trips (tens of miles instead of hundreds) without roads, it would be cheaper, faster, safer, and more effective to just get a jeep.
Can anybody propose a (non-edge case) scenario where you wouldn't be better off with either a bush plane or a jeep?
[1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbHSRrcxzq8 (I should note that, while the plane in the first part only needs a few feet to get airborne, the part it doesn't show is where the pilot has to stay in ground effect to accelerate for another 200 feet or so before he can climb away.)
It is designed so that "everyday" people can fly it, because the sail it is inherently more stable than a fixed wing aircraft. It has a steering wheel that you turn right it goes right. To go higher give it more gas to go lower give it less gas. No ailerons, flaps, rudder or elevator, it uses warping of the sail to turn.
If you guys have questions about ITEC or the Maverick I would be happy to answer them. BTW I have not flown in it yet, they only have the one proto-type and three more are in production. But I have gone 92mph on the ground and it can easily take my Corvette.
Doug at itecusa.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgNlumaVPDw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SERvwWALOM (modern attempt to repeat it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBUOCK3FZxg&feature=relat...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAEi3SMVE60&feature=relat...
One of the Hiller's is here in Bay Area in San Carlos museum.
First: insurance. You would have to insure it as both a plane and as a car, and insurance companies aren't going to know how to handle that, which means they'll either refuse to touch it or charge a premium. Even if such vehicles became common enough for insurance companies to get comfortable with them, they're still probably on the expensive side for cars, and repairing collision damage on airplanes costs a lot more than repairing comparable damage on cars. That's not normally such a big deal because collisions are much less common for airplanes, but with this vehicle you would combine the high collision risk of a car with the high repair costs of an airplane.
Second, and more importantly: maintenance. The FAA requires that periodic inspections and preventative maintenance be conducted at regular intervals, and those intervals are defined in terms of the number of hours the engine has been operating[1]. Airplane maintenance is way more expensive than car maintenance, but every hour you drive this thing on the road will count as an hour towards maintenance required at airplane rates.
Yes, but this isn't an airplane. It's a flying car ;)
Seriously, the maintenance comparison wouldn't appear to be the same. It looks like this thing has a propeller attached to a drag style engine. I would expect maintenance costs to be more akin to a souped up car than an airplane.
Also, by law to drive (in California at least) you're only required to have liability insurance covering the party you hit. Covering your own vehicle is optional.
>Also, by law to drive (in California at least) you're only required to have liability insurance covering the party you hit. Covering your own vehicle is optional.
If you go this route, you have an even bigger incentive to keep it off the road: if you get into a fender-bender, you'll have to pay to the exorbitant repair bill on your "car."
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Maintenance_Technician...
I do agree it would certainly make sense to opt in for covering the car as well. I was mostly making the point the liability rule could be a baseline showing insurance companies had no reason to charge a higher rate than, say, a sports car (under a minimum coverage scenario where they cover only liability costs).
It appears this vehicle costs $84K. I believe any person able to afford a 100K class of car would certainly be able to pay the maintenance and insurance costs to drive it as a car ;)
Not sure what you were trying to say here, but using an A&P isn't "fine," it's mandatory, and it's very expensive.
>...less costly than that of a traditional airplane wouldn't you agree?
Maybe a little, but not significantly. This still misses the point: airplanes are required to get periodic maintenance way more often than cars, and airplane mechanics cost way more than car mechanics. The complexity of the airplane isn't the primary cost driver, the frequent maintenance and the safety requirements placed on that maintenance are.
>It appears this vehicle costs $84K. I believe any person able to afford a 100K class of car would certainly be able to pay the maintenance and insurance costs to drive it as a car ;)
I know a lot of people who own small planes. Most of of those planes were purchased for a price comparable to this thing (because they were purchased used--they would have cost considerably more than $84K if purchased new). All of these people are upper middle class, so these planes represented major expenses for them. They all have to be very careful about how much they fly their planes or they would break their budgets; using their planes as cars would be a terrible waste of money.
Becoming certified as an A&P is a very expensive and time-consuming process, but it pays off in the end for professional A&Ps because they can charge a premium for their work. However, I know a few people who went through this process even though they already have great careers and have no intention of working professionally as A&Ps. Nor were they especially enthusiastic about aircraft maintenance as a hobby. They did it because, in the long run, it was cheaper for them to become certified so they could do all of their own maintenance on their planes rather than pay somebody else to do it. That's how expensive aircraft maintenance is.
PS: Renting an airplane is still a better option if you fly less than 10 hours a month, but IMO there is a nitch for a crappy flying car.
I was trying to say factoring in an A&P wouldn't lead me to believe operational costs would necessarily jump to be prohibitively expensive.
This still misses the point: airplanes are required to get periodic maintenance way more often than car
But you're still missing my point. It's not an airplane :) In other words, I would expect the work and associated costs (including a fully certified A&P) to be quite different on a hot air balloon, let's say with an added engine driven propeller, than on an airplane. The complexity difference is relevant because there is less to go wrong for safety and repair.
I know a lot of people who own small planes...All of these people are upper middle class, so these planes represented major expenses for them.
Yes, but I'd wager those planes are capable of more than 40 mph in the air, and I seriously doubt they would have been bought by under such strenuous expense if they were not. Boats can also represent a source of strained expense, but, like airplanes, they provide recreational function outside the normal cost of living. A person buying this vehicle at 84K with the duplicate function of use as a car, which happens to be capable of 40 mph in the air, is probably going to be richer than upper middle class.
Hey, I'm just an observer looking in at all this. Maybe Maverick LSA hasn't thought your points through, and their project path is flawed. My belief is that it would be workable as a car.
I understand what you're saying, and you're wrong. You're wrong because as far as the FAA is concerned, it is an aircraft, and if you want to fly in their airspace, you're going to have to follow the same exact rules as any other aircraft of the same category. They're not going to let you skimp on their safety and maintenance requirements just because you happen to drive it on the road part of the time.
>In other words, I would expect the work and associated costs (including a fully certified A&P) to be quite different on a hot air balloon, let's say with an added engine driven propeller, than on an airplane. The complexity difference is relevant because there is less to go wrong for safety and repair.
A hot air ballon does have very different maintenance requirements, mainly because it doesn't have an engine (the "P" in "A&P" is for Powerplants). As I keep saying, the main driver of added costs isn't so much things in need of repair, it's periodic maintenance. The FAA has rules that say, "After every n hours of engine time, you have to take your aicraft to an A&P for [inspection or overhaul]." (There are other types of intervals as well, in terms of airframe time or calendar time.) They don't care if those hours were spent flying or driving, either way you have to go pay an A&P to do that stuff. Those costs simply do not exist for cars, where maybe you have to stop in for an annual smog check. The simplicity might save you a few hours of labor costs with the A&P, but your cost structure is still going to be much closer to "airplane" than to "car."
But even when something does need fixing, you're still going to pay a lot more than you would to get a car fixed. The FAA won't let you go to a car mechanic to get the "car parts" fixed, they will insist on having all maintenance performed by an A&P. They are correct to insist on this, because any time you are flying it isn't 50% car or 40% car or 70% car, it's 100% aircraft.
>Maybe Maverick LSA hasn't thought your points through, and their project path is flawed. My belief is that it would be workable as a car.
I think their target customer is a very small niche: people of means trying to get around a country with lousy infrastructure. Odds are pretty good that a country that lacks quality roads also lacks a serious aviation administration, so all the stuff I've said about satisfying FAA safety requirements probably wouldn't apply. That still leaves the very real safety issues of flying around in something that wasn't maintained by someone qualified to work on aircraft, in a place where the nearest repair and medical facilities are potentially days away. A lot of this will probably be resolved by the fact that the kind of person who is going to motor off into the wilderness of a third-world country is probably the kind of self-sufficient person who gets qualified as an A&P before venturing off into the middle of nowhere.
[1] http://mavericklsa.com/releases.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_parachute
It's more likely to be used in remote areas like in the middle of Ecuador as Steve Saint the guy in the video was hinting at. Or like here in Canada, some areas in northern canada aren't accessible by road from the south, this could fly the required miles to reach the next road. (well it would have to be better insulated and fly a little faster considering the distances).
http://www.skycarexpedition.com/about_skycar.php
I wonder who has been working on it the longest?
http://www.gizmag.com/the-parajet-skycar-britains-flying-dun...
I've always thought a lifting-body blimp/dirigible vehicle such as the size of a minivan would do well, the majority of the space inside would be filled with helium. Carbon fibre for the skin and other very light-weight materials would be used.
It would be low speed and easy to control since it would fly fairly slow but probably highway speeds.
The biggest problem would be crash protection that would require a lot of extra material such as bumpers, safety glass, strong seat backs.
a massive source of helium.
1. How much 2. How soon
I love the EAA, if you're attending the fly-in this year ping me and I'll introduce you to my friend Chuck...
2.) By Oshkosh 2011, which is end of july this year
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN6IlPBNRMQPlus when people say "flaying car" I expect a sci-fi like flying care: that it can hover and fly vertically, not have a parachute-like thing attached to it.
This one really almost looks like an april fools joke.
It is highly unlikely the FAA would issue a S-LSA[1] aircraft airworthiness certificate to a hoax.
How angry will the birds be when I tell them they are doing it wrong?