The control system knows what the rudder should be at all times for coordinated flight in the air, and keeping the nose and ground track aligned when near the ground for landing, performing the slip necessary when landing in a cross wind.
Well, not exactly. In case of an engine failure, the system still has power from the batteries to control the actuator and glide the plane (in fact, it will automatically switch to flying at the best glide speed to extend it's range) to a safe landing, whether it's at an airport or in a field. But if you are over some trees, mountains, or somewhere else where a landing is impossible (which is a problem in today's planes too) the parachute is a final backup. the parachute is also the backup in case of a complete system failure
Airhart Sling is just the first step too. yes, it's expensive, but it gets the tech into today's market. Our mission is to scale the market to develop a plane that costs <$100k by bringing in a new wave of people into aviation--those who don't fly airplanes today for the reasons I've discussed.
There's an interesting dynamic here--we (the industry today) are more okay with flying rickety airplanes from the 70s before flying something built with more modern engineering and production techniques.
> As I understand it the idea here is to expand the market and spread certification costs out over more planes.
exactly.
> There are not enough people interested in a personal airplane at any price to support the costs to bring a new one in the air.
our thesis is that this isn't true. we've seen glimpses of this in the past 10 years that haven't been successful, but have shown that there is a wave of people who would get into GA if it were safer and more affordable. our mission to make it so, and the Airhart Sling is just the first step
> There's an interesting dynamic here--we (the industry today) are more okay with flying rickety airplanes from the 70s before flying something built with more modern engineering and production techniques.
Any insights on why that is? My gut feeling is that it’s some combination of cost (there’s still a huge glut of old and cheap planes that basically work fine) and skepticism towards new, less proven models and technologies (i.e. the perception of Cirrus changed very slowly over a decade plus to where now the chute is generally accepted to be a good thing to have).
I think there's definitely a "tried and true" and "if it aint broke don't fix it" mentality. Combine that with the fear of trying something new in the face of the FAA and regulatory barrier, many will say it's better to just take the risk on older stuff than make something new and better
it is indeed a problem. however, Sling (who we are working with on our first model) is also developing a "Whisper" version of their airplane to make it dramatically quieter (https://www.slingpilotacademy.com/airport-noise-reduction/#1...). We hope to adopt the tech into the Airhart Sling as well
Totally agreed. Our long term roadmap has basically this exact product on it. However, anyone who doesn't know about GA will have no clue what this even means. We want more people to get into GA so that there's enough of a market that building such a plane becomes a sustainable business.
I don't think the GA market will ever grow that large though - not without substantial effort to make compliance with all the regulations effortless.
You need more pilots, so making it easier to navigate and comply with Parts 61/141/142, with 67/68.
You need more aerodromes; Part 139.
You need more aircraft, that's Parts 21, 23, 33, 35, 45 and maybe 34, 36 and 39 too.
You need more mechanics; Part 66 / 147.
You need more maintenance facilities, Part 21, 39, 43, 145.
There's maybe 50,000 active GA pilots (PPL or LSA) doing it for pleasure regularly? The rest are time building for the airlines, and same for mechanics.
To get that 50k to 500k to 5M actual people ... I think an affordable aircraft is probably the easiest part. Maybe it'll get people interested? Though you can already buy factory-built LSA's for $300k that'll do 150kts (see Risen); Europe already has a booming LSA scene ... but it hasn't really resulted in more people flying, not as far as I can tell.
I don't think an aircraft is the missing link, but I can't express how much I'd love to be proven wrong!
I haven’t done any piloting. If I could convert a 250 mile trip from a 5 hour drive to a 90 minute flight, I would take my family of 4 to many more places. I’d be willing to invest several months in the requisite training.
Currently I won’t do that at all because (1) way too dangerous, (2) way too expensive, (3) not obvious how to start.
Honestly, I’d love a subscription model for this. I’d pay an initial fee for training. Certify me when I’m safe. Then let me pay to get the airplane and fuel for a specific journey. Handle all the maintenance for me. Check my work on planning. Have a real expert available on integrated speed dial to talk me through anything complicated.
If this winds up being fun and fast, I’m willing to pay more for it. The specific trip I’m looking at would cost $800 to fly with a standard airline. I’d pay double that to self-fly. The premium gets me convenience (I control the exact departure time, less airport hassle) and adventure (flying!).
We are exploring how to make a subscription model work. It's not possible in an experimental category airplane, but our future models where they can be rented (legally due to FAA requirements) will make that possible.
> The Ercoupe tried this exact approach in the 30s in one of the big GA booms and it just wasn't borne out.
The Ercoupe was a great idea for it's time, but we can do so much more with the technology we have today that we didn't have back then
> a production aircraft that's cheaper than $50/hr to fly would.
yes! our long term goal is to get there, but we need more people flying airplanes today to generate enough scale to actually build such an airplane and also stay in business. That's our approach, get more people who can afford to fly doing it, then use that to drive down the cost for everyone.
How many people who don't fly, but can afford to, have you interviewed about their reasons for not flying? This is where I would start trying to solve that problem. I'd be shocked if any of them mention coordinated flying :)
My 2c - the best way to go to big scale with a GA product is to somehow find a way to make it dual use and secure the DoD as a customer. The problem with doing this is that the DoD becomes your main customer and GA becomes your hobby...
We've talked to many and the complexity of flying a plane is a big factor--because the knowledge that if they mess up stick and rudder means they have a high chance of losing control and crashing scares them from flying. Our system helps alleviate that fear.
Today's batteries aren't quite good enough to hit the same performance. But developments in the hybrid electric space look promising. Battery technology is improving though, so in the relatively near future, it very well could be
a combination of altitude, commanded descent rate, and commanded airspeed transition the control system from flight to landing, flare and touch down, and into ground control mode.
yes I should have mentioned actuators as well. the actuators are internally redundant in terms of computation and power and will fail silent and not move if they disagree. Then, each control axis has 2 sets of these servos.
I say axis, rather than control surface, because for something like ailerons, we can have one go neutral in a fault case and the aileron on the other wing still operates with some reduced control authority. So even though each aileron has
one servo, the roll axis has 2 and it maintains redundancy
