Comment by BWStearns | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BWStearns | Hacker News Reader

Always happy to see new GA aircraft, and the tech here looks very cool. The emergency autoland and chute will definitely be lifesavers. If your system can reliably prevent base-final stall spins then that would clearly be awesome.

One thing that jumped out at me is what are you trading to get that protection? While I have no issues with fly by wire, I'd be nervous about a GA aircraft that's overly opinionated about what it should be doing vs how to do it.

* Can I put it into a forward slip, or will it refuse or return to coordinated flight? This could be critical in an engine related emergency where you're too high and can't or don't want to risk getting farther from the airport.

* If I need to make a steep turn to avoid someone heading the wrong way on base is it going to let me?

I see the value in stall prevention but, outside of stall spin on final, that's largely been solved in GA via passive aero design characteristics making it tough to stall and harder to stay stalled.

> If your system can reliably prevent base-final stall spins then that would clearly be awesome.

This was actually a core inspiration for this project. A student on his first solo at an airport north of me crashed on his base to final turn.

> Can I put it into a forward slip, or will it refuse or return to coordinated flight?

Yes, you can make if forward slip. It's a bit clever imo--you just "ask" for low speed and a high descent rate and the energy controllers in the flight computer will figure out that a forward slip is the best way to achieve that. We also have independent ailerons that can be used as spoilers for an even faster descent.

> If I need to make a steep turn to avoid someone heading the wrong way on base is it going to let me?

yep! just push the stick full deflection. you'll feel the active stick fight back because it doesn't want to bank that steeply in normal flight, but you are in control of the plane and it will do anything you command up to it's aerodynamic and structural limits.

>> If your system can reliably prevent base-final stall spins then that would clearly be awesome.

I keep thinking we need more canard aircraft - they don't stall. Most of them are designed with laminar flow wings and no flaps, so landing speeds are higher which makes them less safe and not good for grass strips. I'd like to see a stall-free aircraft without those drawbacks of canards.

Look up the Vashon Ranger, the Kitfox, and the Foxbat. You really cannot stall them by accident and they're conventional layouts. The Ranger/Foxes will just nosedown if you even manage to get them into a stall. We could also bring back biplanes and make some AN-2 derivatives.

I think a cheaper approach to what Airhart is trying to accomplish (from a don't kill pilots perspective) would be to make an aftermarket smart stall horn that could warn earlier and maybe gives some audio/visual feedback if you're getting uncoordinated at a certain angle of attack.

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