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.
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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
(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.)
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
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.
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.
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...