They’re only really useful in established high (by lightplane standards) altitude cruise. They might save you starting from 4000 AGL, but probably not. There’s no hope in a traffic pattern.
The Diamond Katana, which is based on a motorglider design, has castering gear steered by differential breaking. How do I know this? I flew one for a bit. Interesting airplane, definitely different than the standard Cessnas and Pipers. Introduced in the early 1990’s, so far as I know they’re still being made.
Depends on the airframe, really, for a ballistic chute that’s launched via rocket - for light planes such as overgrown UL’s and “sport plane” types, as well as the very light end of GA, the general rule is you want to be 400 feet or higher so actually a good part of an airport pattern you’ve got a usable chute. There have been “saves” from as low as 100 feet. However, one should keep in mind the distinction between survivable and comfortable. On the lower end of the parachute altitudes you have a decent chance of surviving the landing but you’ll likely hit with some force and broken bones are not unknown.
I’ve known a number of people who have pulled the big red handle. The ride down isn’t fun, getting at least bruises is the norm, sometimes bits of you break. I’ve known people who walked away but even best case scenario it’s like walking away from a car wreck - you might be “unhurt” but you’re still going to be sore and hurting for a couple days afterward.
The heavier the airframe the higher up you need to be before the parachute is a viable option, and the harder it is to secure a gentle landing.
I’m missing something here. The plane looks like it would glide roughly as well as most small craft. It’s a bit oddly shaped but otherwise a fairly ordinary plane if you ignore the articulation. I’m sure it could glide at 8:1 or so.
As for a more serious answer about “how do you keep the wings from folding in”, they could add a manual latch of some kind that prevents it–something that can only be accessed on the ground, and which would have an interlock with other systems that make it impossible to fly without engaging it.
Thanks for the update. My first-hand GA knowledge is getting so ancient I completely forget about manufacturers, such as Diamond, that have sprung up after the ~1980s. I need to learn to shut up about that stuff. Or do more research.
Hey, you know more about big iron, I know more about the lighter side. It’s all good.
Here are the new rules; perhaps someone could summarize?
I read the executive summary of your last cite. Overall FAA is taking a common-sense approach. If the Powered Lift vehicle (“PLV” & my term not theirs) can fly like a helo at low speed & hover, it will be treated for bad weather ops more or less the same as a helo. If not then itll be treated as an airplane. So far so sensible.
They anticipate each PLV make and model to be pretty bespoke, with a flight control system and interface very different from any of the others. So the rule demands that each PLV type have a type rating and the pilots must be type rated in that PLV type to fly it. Again fairly common sense. Not popular with the entrepreneurs hoping to make a quick killing, but TS on them.
There are semi-sensible rules on the transition from zero qualified people or instructors to a functioning pilot and instructor ecosystem. Which is not greatly different from what is done in the airline biz now when we introduce a new fleet type. IOW: “How can anyone gain experience, when you need experience to be able to fly the new jets and nobody has that experience to be able to fly?”
Having said that, the initial experience requirements to carry passengers in PLV are a joke as I read it. Aviation and the atmosphere remain as unchanged and terribly unforgiving as always. Assuming I did not misunderstand (a tall order), at least the initial cadre of the PLV pilots will require very little experience in any piloting role (PLV or otherwise) before being able to fly passengers. If my understanding is correct, that’s dumb and will bite them in the ass promptly.
You probably aren’t wrong, and yet… it looks like most of these are designed to only need a warm body in the pilot’s seat. As I’ve speculated elsewhere, they’re going to be designed so that you push the joystick in some direction and the aircraft maybe does that if it’s deemed safe. It doesn’t let you do anything sufficiently dumb, and that includes anything that would take the craft outside of its flight envelope. Archer’s craft at least works this way.
So I guess my thinking is that this gets you most of the way there to fully autonomous craft. It’s unlikely that the “pilot” is actually adding anything, but until people get comfortable with having no pilot at all, this is a reasonable intermediate step.
As to direct aircraft control I agree that is about to go the way of the elevator operator. OTOH …
I have long said to my cow-orkers that the largest guarantor of needing pilots in the cockpit UFN is the presence of weather: thick cloud, violent winds, heavy precip, and turbulence. The industry depends on being able to reliably avoid the worst of it, accurately determine what is flyable-thoughable vs what is not, and being able to do either skillfully without undue risk.
So far sensor tech is poor compared to eyeballs, and the ineffable judgement and experience seeems to come only from experience as an apprentice / FO doing this under supervision.
A big issue with certificating the training if PLVs is they are all designed frm the git-go for one pilot; soon to be zero. How does the one pilot gain experience safely when there is simply no provision for a second pilot with their own set of controls?
In my years of being the elder Captain flying with newbie FOs, none of whom were new to aviation, I prevented a metal-bending crunch more than once with quick hands and a discerning eye. And I’m nobody special in that regard. With PLVs, all that learning will come without a safety pilot on board.
And here we have an issue with any powered vehicle. On the other hand, apparently the Chinese flying cars can make a survivable landing (for the humans) if there’s a mid-air collision. So… yay?
As I keep pointing out, these are flying “cars” only if you completely ignore the definition of “car.”
They’re electric helicopters.
The only car-like thing about them is the hype that ordinary citizens can own one and they’ll be small enough to keep in a typical suburban garage and fly from a typical suburban driveway. So they function as a car-replacement device for commuters, fulfilling the same role. Not that they are themselves are cars in the traditional sense of the word.
And that’s all hype.
Well, one could consider “non-flying” to be part of the definition of “car”, in which case there logically can’t be such a thing as a flying car. And on the other end of the scale, if you define “car” broadly enough, then an airplane is a flying car.
What’s your definition of “car”, why is that definition relevant, and under that definition, what would constitute a “flying car”?
If only there were a thread with a dozen of my posts that could answer your question.
Hint. One of them is #93.
I assume you meant #94, but yes, a hint to not have to scroll back over a hundred posts before finding it is useful.
By your definition, an airplane is a flying car, because they drive when they’re taxiing. But it also invites the second part of my question: Why is that relevant? If you have a flying vehicle, why do you care if it can also drive?
You don’t get to define a flying car anymore than you get to define any other term in language. The public decides what a flying car is. For over 100 years a flying car has meant a vehicle that could be driven on normal roadways and also fly to distant places. That’s for the eminently sensible reason that such a vehicle wold be immensely useful. A family could drive it to a store and also fly it to another city to visit grandma, e.g. Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever defined a flying car as being an airplane that could taxi on a runway. The utter absurdity of such a definition would have insulting to airplanes and automobiles alike.
Dozens, possibly hundreds, of such vehicles have been announced. Each of them has been labeled a flying car, in much the same way that a hamburger patty topped with cheese is standardly labeled a cheeseburger. You could get either separately as a meal but that would confuse and displease the perceived audience. Flying car is the magic term. Anything less is like calling an elevator car a flying car. Car is the proper name for the box passengers stand in to be moved vertically and it does by your definition fly through the air. But that is also too absurd to be accepted as a flying car.
For many decades those flying cars looked much like someone had bolted wings to an automobile, as with that horrifying AVE Mizer above. That changed, or should have, when Hiller introduced his ducted air version, but the notion of a flying car sailed obliviously on.
We now know that VTOL rotored craft are much more sensible, at least relatively so as many practical problems still need to be worked out. They properly should be called flying taxis or suchlike, which will be their main passenger purpose for the forseeable future. Analogous cargo drones will develop alongside them.
Drones aren’t magic. Neither are flying taxis. Flying cars were and are. The American dream has always included the freedom to take off whenever you wanted to wherever you wanted. The automobile fulfilled that dream virtually instantaneously. The flying car was the successor to that dream, a 3D version of being able to navigate both narrow city roadways and the endless air over the continent. In many ways, space travel superseded that dream for a half century or so, with movies and television insisting that the reality loomed for everyone just as the Jetsons could vacation on other planets. That won’t happen for the same depressingly pragmatic reasons that flying cars haven’t succeed.
Dreams are not merely relevant. They are vital, foundational, and motivational. They are carrots instead of sticks. They are not always, or even mostly, achievable. No modern society can live without them. The world always listens to a compelling dream. Maybe it then scoffs, but getting the world to hear in the first place is a giant step.
That’s what you mean by the term, maybe. But you don’t get to decide that any more than I do, and it doesn’t seem to be what the majority means. Think of The Jetsons: Everyone says that George has a flying car, but it can’t be driven on roads.
Indeed. Couldn’t have said it better myself.