Category Filtering: 'vertiflite'
Most consider aircraft survivability only about reduction of aircraft radar signature, or radar cross section (RCS), through shaping and materials. Lowered RCS reduces the range at which a threat radar can detect, locate and identify a target, ideally reduced to a range so small that one can act with impunity — a significant military advantage.
The website eVTOL Insights published its “Power Book” in January, its “definitive list of the influencers, innovators and leaders from the last 12 months.” The intent is to recognize excellence and achievement in the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) industry. To be released every year, the Power Book 2021 “recognizes 21 of the industry’s brightest individuals from across the world and their company’s achievements in 2020.”
Skyworks Aeronautics Corp. announced on Feb. 8, a $100M investment commitment from GEM Global Yield LLC SCS, a fund of the Luxembourg Global Emerging Markets Group (GEM).
At the VFS eVTOL Symposium in January, San Francisco, California-based Airflow announced that it was beginning development of “one of the first full-scale piloted technology demonstrators of an eSTOL aircraft.” For the last year, Airflow has been utilizing a sub-scale model for test flights that have helped develop its eSTOL flight control technology.
Astro Aerospace of Dallas, Texas, has been developing manned and unmanned derivatives of its Astro design based on the PassengerDrone (shown) — one of the first eVTOL demonstrators, with first manned flights in 2017 (see “Astro's Elroy Blasts Off,” Vertiflite, Nov/Dec 2018).
In the 8th Annual Electric VTOL Symposium held by VFS in January, Detroit, Michigan-based Airspace Experience Technologies (ASX) announced its latest electric tilt-wing configuration, Sigma Six.
Massachusetts-based Terrafugia, Inc., announced on Jan. 26 that it had obtained FAA Special Light-Sport Aircraft (LSA) airworthiness certificate for its Transition roadable aircraft (with automobile certification to follow in 2022).
The UK government’s Future Flight Challenge announced in January that it had selected the company Urban Air Port, partnered with Hyundai Motor Group and the Coventry City Council, to develop the Air-One skyport hub to evaluate eVTOL aircraft operations.
Jaunt Air Mobility and its partners made several announcements before and since the beginning of 2021. On Dec. 16, the company announced that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with VerdeGo Aero to explore the development of a hybrid-electric version of its Jaunt slowed rotor/compound (SR/C) electric rotorcraft.
The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) has unveiled three lift-plus-cruise eVTOL aircraft prototypes. The company’s hybrid-electric VTOL project was started in 2019 and the company’s Beijing Civil Aircraft Technology Research Center (BCATRC) has built two prototypes.
