Wisk Wows at Oshkosh

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A Wisk Cora flew autonomously several times along the length of the 8,002-foot main runway, a first at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s 2023 AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  The July 25 event was, “The first-ever public demonstration of a fully autonomous eVTOL fixed-wing airtaxi,” according to the company. Under development and appearing in different configurations over the last several years Wisk’s aircraft have flown in Hollister, California and in New Zealand.  Cora represents the fifth generation of such vehicles.  Wisk, a Boeing partner, is not stopping there. The flight from another perspective, with an explanation of the noise on the soundtrack: “The noise is the 787 APU, not the @WiskAero. ‘  Note how the noise drops as the auxiliary power unit shuts down, with crowd noise competing with the Cora for dominance. https://twitter.com/i/status/1684023361804943360    A Future with Four Seats The latest iteration for the firm is their sixth-generation craft, simply called Generation Six.  It’s a four-seater, with ample room for passengers and …

UAVOS Flies ApusDuo HAPS

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UAVOS, located in the midst of surrounding Google properties in Mountain View, California, sells a wide variety of goods and services related to the unpiloted aircraft world.  One of their biggest creations so far, the ApusDuo High Altitude Psuedo Satellite (HAPS) ran through a full series of tests.  The 10-meter span prototype vehicle will test control algorithms, including takeoffs and landings and verify HAPS aerodynamics.  According to UAVOS “Test flights fully confirmed the flight characteristics of the UAV.”   This is good news, since their next step will be to make at least a 15-meter wing (49.2 feet) wingspan version.  That will rely even more on “Control of roll, pitch, v-shape and slip…due to a controlled change in the angle of attack in particular sections of the wings” employed by the designers.  Note the flexibility of the entire airframe during launch and flight. These controls include the visibly tricky interactions of the two slender wings, a rare pair in tandem designed …

UAVOS Triplicates Tandem Flight

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Aeroelastic deformation, the reshaping of wings, tails, and even fuselages on aircraft subjected to the forces surrounding passage through the air, can be destructive, twisting and shaking aircraft surfaces.  UAVOS, a company specializing in flight controls for drones of all sizes, has created a tandem-wing, tri-tailed High-Altitude Psuedo Satellite (HAPS) called ApusDuo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroelasticity Wikipedia gives a long and involved discourse on aeroelasticity, but UAVOS gives a lighter, more graphic approach that shows the dangers involved, and UAVOS’ approach to conquering those perils. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=1YsloiRVEzs The firm makes three autopilots for varying sizes of aerial vehicles from those weighing less than 15 kilograms (33 pounds) to up to 1,500 kilograms (3,300 pounds).   UAVOS craft include rotary-wing vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) machines capable of carrying from one kilogram (2.2 pounds) to 90 kg.(198 pounds), and conventional aircraft that include an autonomous version of the Pipistrel Sinus.   Their ApusDuo has two wings, with the main wing spanning 15-meters (49.2 feet), equal to …

Zee?  Kitty Hawk? Cora?

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Different Names, Different Configurations Zee, One of two aircraft companies funded by Google founder and CEO Larry Page, has been a highly mysterious business.  Its web pages mostly gave discrete job descriptions for those willing to sign up for a mostly undefined mission.  Occasional glimpses of patent drawings, spy shots of a multi-rotor craft in Google’s Mountain View, California parking lot came into view, and later, in-flight shots of other, different looking craft came from Hollister, California. Kitty Hawk, the other company funded by Larry Page, seems to have subsumed Zee and produced a 12-rotor, single-propeller aerial taxi about the size of a Cessna 150, but capable of vertical takeoffs and landings and seamless transitions to forward flight.  A white example has flown at Hollister airport and a yellow version at a field in New Zealand. An Almost Epic Journey The intellectual, physical and geographical journey of this craft is almost epic, and seems to have resulted in a 13-motored …

Venture Capitalists Jump on JoeBen’s Bandwagon

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People waste billions of hours sitting on roads worldwide each year. We envision a future where commuting by eVTOL (electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing) is a safer, faster, and cost-competitive alternative to ground transportation. We have spent the last ten years developing the technologies that have made our full-scale technical demonstrator possible and are now ready to build a commercial version of the aircraft. We’re excited to have attracted the backing of leaders in auto manufacturing, data intelligence, and transportation sectors. —Joby Aviation founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt (Green Car Congress) A Knack for Making and Attracting Money That backing came February 1st in “funding from investors including Intel Capital, Toyota AI Ventures, JetBlue Technology Ventures, and Capricorn Investment Group, a prominent backer of Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies,” according to Bloomberg News. JoeBen Bevirt has been thinking boundless thoughts for most of his life, based on a highly creative output that includes GorillaPod flexible photographic tripods, energy-gathering kites, electric motors, …

Heathrow London to Charing Cross in 12 Minutes

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Autonomous Flight designs and manufactures autonomous passenger drones (APD), and is based in both the United Kingdom and the United States.  Founded by Martin Warner, the company joins a growing number of entrepreneurial groups combining drone hardware and “software-based technologies” to provide rapid point-to-point transportation. Warner envisions a wide range of drone-based, battery-powered air vehicles for both commercial and private use, which he calls the “new gold rush in transportation and aviation”.  Autonomous Flight’s website promotes the familiar arguments for rising above gridlock.  The firm’s commercial notes the average American commuter spends 3.5 hours trapped in traffic every month.  The answer is the Y6S, a two-passenger drone that will whisk you from London-Heathrow to Charing Cross Station in only 12 minutes, cruising at 300 to 1,500 feet above terra firma at 70 mph.  Either trip would take about an hour by car. Martin Warner, the “serial entrepreneur” some have dubbed Britain’s Elon Musk, holds forth in a BBC interview. He …

Too Late for Boxing Day*, Ehang Delivers the Goods

Dean Sigler Batteries, Electric Powerplants, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Broadcast live on December 24, this demonstration of the eHang 184 is, interestingly, an English-language presentation, with a lot of English names floating about. Someone named Mike shows off the Ehang 184 in this Christmas-related special.  His friend Miranda snugs herself into the compact passenger compartment, tries on the safety harnesses, and deplanes before committing aviation.  The video is a sales pitch for the drone manufacturer – actually more of a long wind-up before a pitch into the air.  Mike takes us through a tutorial on the craft, which seats one passenger and has eight propellers that are mounted on four arms (one-eight-four, or 184). The rather ungainly entrance and exit of the petite young woman suggests possible improvements eHang’s designers might make in the otherwise swoopy-looking gull-wing doors.  They might also consider how to protect the unwary from the knee- and ankle-high 1.6 meter (5.25 feet) propellers.  One hopes the designers have incorporated a safety propeller stop system such as …

Aurora Flight Sciences Win DARPA Award for Advanced VTOL

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Electric Aircraft Symposia attendees will be familiar with presentations by Dr. John S. Langford, Chairman and CEO of Aurora Flight Sciences, an aeronautical firm continuously redefining the leading edge of aerial technology.  He has shared the firm’s achievements in autonomous flight, with the company’s Centaur, a twin-engine light twin going from takeoff to landing at a distant airport without the need for pilot intervention. With other research projects on solar power, high altitude reconnaissance, and future “double-bubble” wide-body airliners, Aurora apparently showed enough innovative capacity to win an award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for its newest X-Plane, an unpiloted vertical takeoff and landing speedster called Lightning Strike. This Phase 2 award takes from a preliminary design study to a Design, Development and Integration phase, which DARPA explains, “… addresses in innovative ways many longstanding technical obstacles, the biggest of which is that the design characteristics that enable good hovering capabilities are completely different from those that …

EAS IX: Aurora Flight Science Set Records without Pilots

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John Langford, CEO of Aurora Flight Sciences, has been demonstrating autonomous aircraft for years – a fact he has shared with Electric Aircraft Symposium audiences several times.  This year he gave a brief history of Aurora, starting with the Sunlight Eagle, an adaptation of the Michelob Light Eagle, a human-powered aircraft that preceded the most successful long-distance flight by an HPA – the Daedalus with a 76-mile trip over the Mediterranean. The 2009 craft was originally powered with bicycle-like pedals and still holds four world records for human-powered flight. For its two test flights at Las Cruces International Airport, the pedals were replaced with solar panels, an electric motor, a high-performance battery, and a flight control system.  Even with all the add-ons, the 114-foot span airplane weighed a mere 173 pounds. This ability to build light, capable airframes coupled with intelligent remote and autonomous controls has led to multi-day endurance craft well suited to ISR (Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) missions. …

NASA, CAFE Aims and Goals Converge

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Charles F. Bolden, Jr., a retired U. S. Marine Corps Major General, astronaut and now NASA Administrator,  had enough adventures in any one of his careers to have made several who’s who lists.  The twelfth administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, his previous careers included 34-years in the Marine Corps during which he spent 14 years as a member of NASA’s Astronaut Office,  traveled to orbit four times on the space shuttle, deployed the Hubble Space Telescope, and flew on the first U. S.-Russian joint shuttle mission. As a Marine fighter pilot, he flew over 100 combat missions during the Vietnam conflict; and during the first half of 1998, served as Commanding General of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force Forward in support of Operation Desert Thunder in Kuwait. According to his NASA biography, “Bolden’s many military decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame …