Zeva Aero’s Zero Test Flight in Full Size

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

While waiting for Eviation Alice’s first test flight, we got a glimpse of another type of electric aviation in Pacific Northwest skies.  Zeva Aero’s Zero single “seat” flying saucer lifted off in someone’s sunny back yard for a series of hops. The overlay of soft music keeps us from knowing how noisy this thing is, and it would be of interest to know if it passed the good neighbor test while levitating, and whether the eight motors and propellers hummed or screamed.  (NOTE: since the video of the flight test has been removed from YouTube, we’re substituting the company campaign video. Founded in 2017 “to compete in the Boeing GoFly competition and then build a business on the back of that effort,” Zeva is the brain-child of Stephen Tibbits and Ben Gould.  Tibbits, a serial entrepreneur, has started at least four other companies and he and Gould now lead a team of 25. Their mission statement seems a bit familiar …

EJ-1, A Circle of Power

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Consider encircircling yourself with a ring of tiny electric motors turning a collection of well-coordinated thrusters.  Electric Jet Aircraft of Anderson, Indiana showed off their vehicle, claimed to be the world’s first wearable electric jetpack – the EJ-1, at Oshkosh, Wisconsin during this week’s AirVenture air show.  A 16-motor, battery-powered rig that weighs around 100 pounds, depending on the battery pack, it’s made to fly several feet off the ground while carrying a 200-pound pilot. The product of 13 years of preliminary design and innovation, the aircraft was test flown before its introduction at the Urban Mobility Showcase at the show.  Composed of four “JetPods,” modules of four electric motors and associated controllers that produce 80 pounds of thrust each, the EJ-1 can logically lift 320 pounds, leaving adequate excess thrust for its 200-pound payload to give a good climb to its fairly low “cruising altitude.”   Flight duration is limited, but a lighter pilot should be able to add larger …

GoFly Announces First Round Prize Winners

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Boeing just announced the ten winners of Phase I in its GoFly competition, in which entrants design, build and fly a “personal flying device.”  As Boeing explains, contest rules are designed to enable entrants “To foster the development of safe, quiet, ultra-compact, near-VTOL personal flying devices capable of flying twenty miles while carrying a single person.”  The list of partners and co-sponsors is impressive and includes virtually all major American aviation advocacy groups. As the Green Flight Challenge demonstrated seven years ago, prize money encourages a grand series of investments by individuals in hopes of winning a prize.  In this case, 3,000 entries by 725 teams from 95 countries presented drawings and documents describing their proposed PFD, with a select 10 advancing to Phase II, which will require a demonstration of the proposed machine’s ability to perform as promised. “To be able to engage so many individuals from leading universities, major corporations and startups, and connect them through our community …