The Terrafugia got a light sport aircraft weight exemption from the FAA, meaning that the person who is now swerving into your lane while texting on her cell phone may soon be landing at an airport near you:
The Terrafugia Transition is designed as a ‘light sport’ aircraft, the smallest kind of private aeroplane under FAA classification.
But manufacturers found it impossible to keep under the 1,320lb weight limit, once they had added safety features – such as airbags, crumple zones and roll cage – required for road vehicles.
Uniquely, however, the FAA has granted the Transition an exemption – allowing it to be classified as a light sport aircraft despite being 120lb over limit, reports the Daily Telegraph.
Light sport aircraft licences require just 20 hours’ flying time, making them much easier to obtain than full private licences.
The two-seater Transition can use its front-wheel drive on roads at ordinary highway speeds, with wings folded, at a respectable 30mpg.
Once it has arrived at a suitable take-off spot – an airport, or adequately sized piece of flat private land – it can fold down the wings, engage its rear-facing propellor, and take off.
Meanwhile, taking yet another page out of the comic book archive, DARPA is at work manufacturing the first Transformer robot:
At the moment the tiny robot – a sheet just half a millimetre thick, scarcely thicker than a piece of paper – only folds itself into a boat, like a child’s toy, or a “paper glider” plane shape. But it is anticipated that in future it will be used to create full-sized cars and aircraft that morph as they move, or robots that can “flow” like mercury into small openings, or multipurpose military uniforms that can adapt to different environments.
Researchers at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) launched the project in 2007 in conjunction with Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a small sheet of stiff tiles and “joints” of elastomer, “studded with thin foil actuators and flexible electronics. The demonstration material contains 25 total actuators, divided into five groupings. A shape is produced by triggering the proper actuator groups in sequence,” according to a statement by Robert Wood, the head of the Harvard research team.
In France, on the other hand, locals have chosen to go the other way, with a team building a medieval chateau using local materials and only contemporary tools. The project as seen as both an experiment and a jobs program:
In woods surrounding the castle, craftsmen ply all the trades required for so monumental an endeavour. Stone-cutters and carpenters fashion the raw materials. A blacksmith forges the nails. Ropes, baskets and roof-tiles are all made on site.
“The rule is that only what we know from documents that existed at the time is allowed,” says Sarah Preston, an English guide.
BBC file image of craftsman at work Only contemporary tools and materials are used in the constructionWhat started out as an eccentric pipe dream is now an established enterprise, drawing in tens of thousands of visitors from around Europe every year.
That story about the castle building reminds me of the NOVA episode where they built a full size trebuchet and a castle wall, both using 13th century techniques. Once the trebuchet was built, they used it against the castle wall. Best. Nova. Ever. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostempires/trebuchet/builds.html
French thing sounds awesome, I’m meant to visit my twin brother in London at some stage, wonder if a blacksmith apprentice position is open, always wanted to be a blacksmith….
Although eight hours on the hammer might be a bit much, I spent three hours late this afternoon knocking mortar off bricks so I can use them again and frankly lifting that weight for that long with thumb and forefingers led to quite a sore hand.
“Want to know why we don’t have flying cars? Take a look at the folks driving on the freeway sometime. Do you REALLY want these people in the air?”
Slightly tangential, but there used to be a restaurant in London named the “Elizabethan Room” where one could enjoy the atmosphere of that age. All the waitresses dressed as Tavern “wenches,” etc., with we patrons encouraged to fully play the role: “WENCH, bring me more meade!” One ate at long oaken tables on benches, etc, with food appropriate to the age. Besotted fun had by all–especially with one or two flights of guys from the squadron at the table on “boys night out.” LOL.
Reminds me of a Wing Dining-in we had one year. Medevial Night where you were allowed only a bowl and a spoon for the meal. All the food dumped into the bowl at once. Might even have been fun except the Wing Cmdr decided that it might be TOO much fun and allowed each diner only ONE small beer for the entire evening. And refused to let us out to bring drinks in from the Stag Bar next door. And a crappy evening was had by all.
You know, if the FAA can waiver the LSA requirements, why can’t they do a larger waiver…and allow Cessna 150/152 aircraft to be operated as LSAs?
That would certainly be within the intent of the LSA rules. Perhaps this is a breach in the FAA’s wall on the LSA.
You could also add the Piper “Traumahawk” and the Beech Skipper to that list.
I can hardly wait to see the look on Terrafugia drivers’ faces when they discover all the places they *won’t* be allowed to fly.
DARPA and Grumman were working on an aerial reconfigurable UAV back in the ’90s, but the only thing the project accomplished was to improve Grumm’s bottom line for that year…
Yup. Back when I thought I had money, I considered trying to get an airplane without an electrical system, so as not to be required to keep a transponder. After doing some research I found that there just isn’t very much uncontrolled airspace anymore.
Also, as an old scaredy-cat, I’m not sure I want to learn how to start up a plane by flipping the prop at my age. I mean, I still remember how much it hurt to try to start a glow engine with a nice sharp nylon prop, on a cold day, with a juicy prime in it. The methanol and nitro in the fuel may be antiseptic, but sure hurt when they get into the wound. I used to have a neighbor who looked funny and walked funny; he had walked into a turning propellor.
Car safety rules… That must be the reason for the canard foreplane, to comply with the bumper rules. Y’know, if I had one, I might be tempted to attack the “required for cars” stuff with hacksaw and chisel, if it weren’t too intimately integrated into the structure. Emission controls would have to go, too. I betcha one could reduce stall speed by 5 knots and really add to range and/or useful load.
P.s. The front wheel drive seems stupid. Those homokinetic u-joints are heavy. A Morgan-style trike would be lighter, and one could register it as a motorcycle, avoiding having to have a lot of the heavy “safety” gear.
One thing unremarked about so far here is the prospects for nano technology mentioned in the middle third of the post. The potential for nano-tech is to unbelievably huge it’s going to revolutionize our entire society, not just warfare. The potential prospects are simply mind-bogglingly scary.
Sometimes I think we deserve to end up as the proverbial gray goo.
The Terrafugia Transition is a “death car”. Imagine it being on the road with a 35 mph cross-wind, as often is experience in SoCal during Santa Anna conditions (and higher winds, up to 60 mph in some places). How about its handling when passing (or being passed by) a semi-trailer and encountering the wind stream.
And parking structures with entry restrictions; and parking on the street; and how big are the blind spots for lane changes, etc, etc.
Not only will owners find they can fly it in few places — they will be surprised at how few places they can drive it.
Don’t worry about lane changes, nobody is going to get close enough to hit that thing, what with the bobbing and weaving of folded wings and lift producing body parts, and that really bright green turn signal on the right side.
I’m just trying to imagine driving a $200,000 vehicle on Dallas freeways…..
I can just imagine what the insurance will run on one of those.
Really! The question is, would you even be able to find anyone that would write such a policy?
At another site, I just found this video of a racing P-51 with a v12 Merlin and contra-rotating props….very cool sound in the flyby…
As a boy, I feverishly tracked the progress of a heavily modified P-51 Mustang named “Red Baron”. Rolls Royce Griffon engine instead of the Merlin and contra props from a Shackelton bomber. Damn thing broke the 500mph mark. Also crashed with Steve Hinton on board and almost killed him. Engine failure I believe. Wicked airplane though.
http://www.enginehistory.org/Convention/2006/Presentations/LawPete/RedBaron/red_baron_1.htm
Think I’ll just stick with the T-Craft. That thing looks like it will have the glide ratio of a crowbar.
As for LSA, unless you live in a metroplex there is plenty of airspace to fly without an electrical system. Just got to stay out of B, C, and D airspace. Not so well known is the fact that you may be able to get authorization to fly out of some of that airspace with an aircraft manufactured without an electrical system by writing the ATC facility manager and requesting it. It will depend on the volume of traffic the facility has to handle. Of course there is a reason I remain residing where I do.
You seem to be a sensible, rational man, Sir.
You can cheat, a little bit. You can have an electric starter on your airplane, and only use an external battery to make it spin.
JTG-
The Continental A-75-9 has the starter but no Gen/alt does the job you are mentioning. Wish I had one. An extra ten horses and not having to handprop it meself. The T-craft doors swing all the way forward so you can throw the prop easily from the right side straddling the right main tire and stay safe.
A WW1 vet built a castle named Chateau Laroche on the banks of the Little Miami River in Loveland, Ohio. Harry Delos Andrews worked on the castle from 1929 until (as far as I can tell) his death in 1981. He used cardboard quart-sized cardboard milk containers as molds for bricks, and did 99% of the work himself.
Andrews began work on the castle “to provide a place for his Sunday School class of young men to swim, fish and camp.”
“…Andrews formed the Knights of the Golden Trail. Based on the Ten Commandments and principles of chivalrous knighthood, the purpose of this organization was to save modern civilization from degradation and degeneration, just as noble knights saved Europe from the Dark Ages. Of course, the knights would need a castle to meet in. Thus, on June 5, 1929, Chateau La Roche, or “Rock Castle,” was begun. In 1930, the castle was dedicated.”
I’ve read some reports that the entire castle is 1/5 scale, in conflict with other reports that only the ballroom is 1/5 scale. I suspect the latter is true.
According to Legend, “At Chateau La Roche, Andrews pulled the son of an English nobleman off the battlefield. The grateful father knighted Andrews for his service.” Hence Sir Harry Andrews. To be honest, I expect that anyone who builds an entire castle, by hand, has earned the rank of Knight. But that’s just me.
Romanticism about the medieval period generally runs out for most when the stop to think about the implications of the famous rhyme:
“In days of old
When knights were bold
And toilets weren’t invented…”
Equipping your chateau with authentic medieval garderobes will not impress the missus. Nor the local building inspector, I’d imagine.
Or air conditioning. The Crusaders used to burn green logs 24/7 in their Mid-Eastern forts just to blanket the stench. (Same reason the now burgeoning cities of the desert SW like Houston, San Antonio, Phoenix, etc., –hell the entire region for that matter–never really experienced widespread growth until the invention of air conditioning and its wide-spread use post WWII.)
Even back in 1970, the SW wasn’t much. I can remember it took less than hour to get through Albuquerqe on a US highway when we went from San Antonio to Grand Canyon, with stops at Carlsbad Caverns, painted desert, and petrified forest. The majority of growth has taken place just in the last 30 years. Most of those olf AFBs were pretty isolated. None more so than Alamagordo, where even the Chaplain is reputed to have gone over the hill.
I’ll go you one better, QM (think I mentioned it before) Wendover AFB, Wendover, UT, the old base where the B-29 Wing trained to drop the A-Bomb on Japan is the most out-of-the-way godforsaken place on earth (which is why they chose it) Of course it was long closed when I passed thru Wendover in 1960 coming back from summer family vacation in Calif and the West. (Went out Rt 66, back thru Utah, Wyoming Denver, Kc, etc., the northern route.) Sand/Salt storm forced us to stay in no-tell motel over-night with heat broken on cold summer desert night–one of the more miserable nights I’ve ever endured.
LeMay was stationed at Wendover for a short period when the 305th was being assembled and trained. Helen and Janey actually came and stayed with him in a hotel that had was right on teh Nevada/Utah line. One end had slot machines and the restaurant was at the other end. LeMay didn’t have much good say about the place, but he was busy while he was there. He might have more bad to say if hadn’t been preoccupied.
The business about the Chaplain going over the hill was from LeMay’s memoirs. He called it Alamagoogoo, which I’m guessing was the current slang for it then. Just looking at the map, neither place has anything to recommend it.
Part of “Independence Day” was filmed at Wendover. That was probably its 15 minutes of fame.
This whole idea of technology convergence, a car that turns into a submarine or an airplane that works like an auto doesn’t usually work due to huge tradeoffs to accomplish each mission. It will never do either job effectively.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine driving a winged monstrosity to pick up groceries. –and anything that doesn’t serve the express purpose of safe, effective flight will not be on the list for the average pilot.
This is not new. The “airphibian” ConvAair car was introduced in 1946 and in 1949 the Aerocar was invented. You can still see it at the EAA museum in Oshkosh. 60 years later the dream lives on, but I suspect that’s what it will remain.