Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
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By Morten
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1860493
(From the Flyer Twitter feed on the RHS)
http://bit.ly/3hWu4fh and https://www.opener.aero

That looks like fun to me. The 'parking under your own PVA' is seriously cool (unless it takes 3 days to charge the batteries in that config) and making it amphibian is the icing on the cake ... I'll have one to have on the fjord :D
It'll probably come in at a lower cost than a seat on Virgin Orbit or the New Shepard ?

So the single seat ultralight type in the US requires neither certificate to build not licence to fly ? How close is that to the SSDR here or in EASA land?
#1860734
Just glancing through the web-site 2 things immediately spring to mind:
- Range 40 mile ... i.e. a 20 mile operating radius
- Watching the video it looks like the passenger gets stood on their head while it does a rapid deceleration

That said, if someone wants to buy me one, it looks like a nice toy

OC619
#1860854
gaznav wrote:It can’t be an SSDR Aeroplane as the clue is in the title (ie. it needs to have fixed wings and a stall speed below 35kts) :thumright:


It’s high time the regulators caught up with current technology and stop applying outdated rules to control everything thereby stifling progress.
A BRS would solve the stall speed issue and “aircraft” rather than “aeroplane” would cure the rest.
#1860996
I don’t think it’s important how much negotiation has gone on in the past or recently.
The drone type of man carrying aircraft is upon us, we don’t know yet what kind of propulsion systems someone might be playing with in his garden shed. So to apply some kind of regulation to anything, based on the assumption that it must be conventional is just going to stifle anything new, whatever it is.
Why not just put a “weight limit single seat aircraft” design criteria on it and leave people to try what ever they like?
If I were to invent the Warp Drive I couldn’t try it out with a NPPL because all Airspace above 90000 ft is class A and I’m not allowed to go there, so I am not allowed to leave the planet!! :D
#1861009
I believe that all airspace above FL660 is uncontrolled and therefore effectively class G. However, you will need a transponder above FL100 unless you get an exemption (there is that word again).

My understanding of SSDR was that it was a risk based decision that looked at:

1. It was single seat and so only the occupant is likely to be killed/injured.
2. It has stall speed below 35kts, mass and thus incredibly low wing loading, so the inertia transferred in an accident is likely to be low in a loss of control event (more of a flutter to the ground unless everything disintegrates into small constituent components (unlikely)).
3. It has an option to carry a BRS parachute if the weight and wing loading is increased by roughly 5% (5% of 300kgs is the extra 15kgs which has to include the BRS mass). So as a secondary safety mechanism, the primary being the SSDR Aeroplane design, the BRS allows for a 5% increase in mass that translates to inertia delivered to any 3rd party on the ground.

The snag with these multi-rotor designs is that they don’t even have the auto rotate option that an auto gyro or helicopter has. You only need to look at the Alauda Airspeeder Mk II accident at Goodwood 2 years ago to see what happens when the rotors stop.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... _03-21.pdf

I suspect that there will need to be a lot of convincing to be done for multi-rotor electric flight to be considered SSDR anytime soon.
#1861011
Just re-reading the Goodwood accident:

Between 3,000 ft and the impact point, the average rate of descent was 5,000 ft/min and approximately 4,500 ft/min at impact. Due to the relatively benign wind conditions, the aircraft travelled 875 m from the takeoff point with a total flight time of 7 minutes 10 seconds. The kinetic energy at impact with a rate of descent of 4,500 ft/min was calculated as 24,800 Joules.


Then:

This report also discussed the risk of injury due to falling objects and referred to the UK Oil and Gas industry’s DROPS32 analysis tool. It noted that using this tool, a blunt object of around 5 kg (a typical mass of a small UAS) falling from around 3 m could cause a fatal injury. The kinetic energy of this fall would be about 140 joules.
The rules introduced by IR 2019/947 for devices in the open category state that aircraft able to impart 80 joules of kinetic energy shall not be operated intentionally over ‘uninvolved people’.


That is the snag here, I believe with any heavy multi-rotor aircraft being considered for SSDR.
#1861094
It's also a poor choice of name for marketing to Canadians, especially Labradorians :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blackfly_Song

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/ ... y-song-emc
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