News

eVTOL News at Heli-Expo 2018

• 22 Mar 2018 12:31 PM
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AHS International Executive Director Mike Hirschberg hosted a panel discussing the promise, progress and challenges of electric VTOL aircraft development. More than 50 companies are currently developing eVTOL aircraft (see the AHS website, www.eVTOL.news), with several in advanced stages of flight testing. Industry experts expect these new products to enter the market in the next 5-10 years, and expand the operational opportunities for rotorcraft operators, due to their extremely low noise and low operating costs.

The eVTOL is in the Details

• 01 Mar 2018 09:56 AM
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A packed house at January’s AHS International Transformative Vertical Flight Technical Meeting and Fifth Annual Workshop learned about bold visions for urban air taxis and the challenges of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL). Four days of presentations hosted by the AHS San Francisco Bay Area Chapter covered aeromechanics, propulsion, acoustics, infrastructure and certification advances aimed largely at airborne mass transit. The new rotorcraft suggested for moving people over clogged streets include multicopters, tiltrotors, tilt wings and ducted fans, nearly all designed around Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP). AHS International executive director and workshop program chair Mike Hirschberg observed, “Really, transformative flight is [largely] about DEP and the design freedom that it enables.”

5th Annual Transformative VTOL Workshop Videos and Briefings

• 26 Feb 2018 04:35 PM
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AHS International's 5th Annual Transformative Vertical Flight Workshop, held in Jan. 2018 in San Francisco, California, featured the latest advances and possibilities in urban air mobility. Videos and presentations for the workshop are now available for download: www.vtol.org/TVF-2018

A³ Vahana eVTOL Tiltwing

• 26 Feb 2018 11:03 AM
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Vahana, the all-electric VTOL aircraft from A³ by Airbus, made its first full-scale flight on Jan. 31, 2018, at the Pendleton UAS Range in Pendleton, Oregon. The first untethered flight of the unmanned, fully self-piloted electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) demonstrator was a 53-second hover at 16 ft (5 m). A³ completed a second flight of the first demonstrator, dubbed “Alpha One,” the following day with representatives from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Advanced VTOL Demonstrators Accelerate Full Tilt

• 26 Feb 2018 10:58 AM
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Joby Aviation, Inc., which went silent in late 2016 shortly after telling Vertiflite that it would fly in early 2017 (“The Demand for On-Demand Mobility, Vertiflite, Jan./Feb. 2017), revealed on Feb. 1, 2018 that it is well advanced in its flight testing of its four-seat S4. Although the company has still not revealed any images of the S4 since the AHS-led 2nd Transformative Vertical Flight Workshop in August 2015 (shown), the company officially announced on Feb. 1 that it has been flying the eVTOL aircraft and that it is “now developing a commercial version of that design and preparing that vehicle for certification.”

XTI Aircraft Refines its TriFan 600 VTOL BizJet

• 26 Feb 2018 10:38 AM
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Vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) -capable aircraft other than helicopters are not yet part of business and commercial aviation fleets. But that could change someday. Although there is much work going on right now on fully-electric VTOL aircraft for the Uber Elevate mission and other intra-city applications (see “The eVTOL Is in the Details,” pg. 42), larger aircraft and longer distances will require hybrid-electric propulsion solutions in the foreseeable future.

Aviation Comes to the Consumer at CES 2018

• 21 Feb 2018 02:47 PM
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The Consumer Technology Association’s CES 2018 (formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show) took place Jan. 9–12, 2018, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Key themes at the largest technology exhibition in the world included the promise of 5G, smart cities, smart homes, vehicle technology, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality and technologies for consumers’ increasingly connected lives.

Turning Volts to VTOL

• 01 Jan 2018 08:57 PM
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The motors that propel and control electric vertical flight pose design, integration and certification challenges.

Commentary: 75 Years of Advancing Vertical Flight

• 30 Dec 2017 11:15 AM
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Seventy-five years ago, on Feb. 25, 1943, 26-year old Edward Katzenberger stood up in a high school gymnasium in Stratford, Connecticut, and called a meeting to order. At that meeting, the participants resolved to establish the American Helicopter Society.

Katzenberger, having joined Sikorsky Aircraft the year before, had been talking with other employees about establishing “The Sikorsky Helicopter Club.”

VerdeGo Green Team

• 22 Dec 2017 11:17 AM
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Erik Lindbergh, grandson of famed aviators Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, has founded VerdeGo Aero, “an innovative new aerospace company with a mission to provide the upcoming multi-billion-dollar urban transportation market with a safe, clean, and quiet hybrid-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that can fly piloted or autonomously.”