Aircraft engine maker Continental Aerospace Technologies announced yesterday at EAA AirVenture that it is jumping into the urban air mobility fray, becoming a partner with, and making an investment in, Florida-based eVTOL builder VerdeGo Aero, which was founded by Erik Lindbergh, Embry-Riddle Eagle Flight Research Center director Pat Anderson, and Eric Bartsch. The VerdeGo is a two- to three-seat tiltwing with a diesel hybrid-electric propulsion system.
Continental CEO Rhett Ross said the investment was consistent with the company’s goal of remaining the “first choice in GA [general aviation] power” and comes as the company announced significantly improved sales; a new $75 million, 285,000-sq-ft manufacturing plant in Mobile, Alabama; better customer service; and a new replacement power offering for the ubiquitous Cessna 172.
Ross said the new manufacturing plant will open in September. “We’ve been operating in circa-1930s buildings with 1930s equipment and still building a fine product,” he said, adding that the new factory contains space to add the most modern manufacturing capabilities, including 3D printing.
According to Ross, the company’s customer service is also greatly improved and enhanced. Continental has hired additional technical service representatives, built up a $30 million spare parts inventory, and slashed parts shipping time.
Epic Aircraft expects to begin customer deliveries of its $3.25 million E1000 turboprop single by year-end, CEO Doug King said yesterday at EAA Airventure. The FAA is scheduled to start certification flight testing of the aircraft at the end of August, a process that he said could take up to 30 days, followed by 150 hours of function-and-reliability testing.
“We have only a couple of months left to go,” he said, noting that the first of 87 customer aircraft on order is already on the assembly line at the company’s 300,000-sq-ft factory in Bend, Oregon, where 265 are currently employed. King said the company expects to receive FAA production certification “right after” receiving the type certificate for the aircraft. Initial production will be one aircraft per month, with the goal to eventually accelerate to one aircraft per week.
According to King, the company has worked over the past year to optimize engine airflow to create better cruise and high/hot performance and that the E1000 now has a top speed of 333 knots, an increase of eight knots. He said a few items had held up the flight-test program in recent months, including FAA scrutiny of the cockpit night lighting and the stall/stick shaker.
Piper president and CEO Simon Caldecott is pleased to be the apparent trainer-maker of choice at a time when demand for pilots is skyrocketing. “The latest Boeing forecast calls for a need for 800,000 pilots in the next 20 years,” he said yesterday at EAA AirVenture. “We’ve signed contracts for more than 100 of our Pilot 100 series in the past two months.”
Training specialist ATP committed to 50 Pilot 100s and IFR-equipped 100is, with deliveries scheduled to start in 2020. In addition, Purdue University signed for 13 Garmin G1000-equipped Archers. Addressing the issue of meeting production demand, Caldecott said, “The build-to-order model is working well.” He cited the company’s $3.5 million investment in facility upgrades.
He also was clearly enthusiastic about Piper’s foray into additive manufacturing (3D printing), which began at a modest level in 2009, but has since ramped up to a much higher scale. He held up a printed environmental-system duct from the M600 single-engine turboprop and said it represented a 94 percent cost savings over an aluminum component. “We’re having to re-train our engineers to take full advantage of the prototyping potential,” he said.
Asked about how the turbine singles in Piper’s line are doing, he said the available inventory for M600s among dealers is at a long-time low, indicating a solid market.
ForeFlight Offering New Sentry Mini Receiver at AirVenture
Foreflight has announced the Sentry Mini, the newest addition to the Sentry line of ADS-B In receivers. Priced at $299, the Sentry Mini is available for sale now at the ForeFlight booth at EAA AirVenture. Important features include a dual-band ADS-B receiver that displays weather and traffic through the ForeFlight Mobile app; built-in WAAS GPS that displays GPS position; and Weather Replay, which records an animated radar replay. The Sentry Mini can connect with as many as five devices, and over-the-air firmware updates are available via the ForeFlight Mobile app.
“With Sentry Mini, ForeFlight customers have access to essential inflight weather, traffic and GPS information in a surprisingly compact device,” said ForeFlight co-founder and CEO Tyson Weihs.
ForeFlight teamed with Montana-based uAvionix to design and manufacture the Mini. “It is now well established that the use of ADS-B In significantly enhances the safety of each and every flight. Sentry or Sentry Mini should be in each and every flight bag and cockpit,” said uAvionix CEO Paul Beard.
Sentry Mini supports animated Nexrad, Metars, TAFs, Airmets/Sigmet, Pireps, winds and temperatures aloft, TFRs, Notams, SUA information, turbulence, lightning, cloud tops, and weather advisories from air traffic control centers. It also can receive air-to-air traffic info from ADS-B Out-equipped aircraft and rebroadcast traffic information from FAA ground towers (ADS-R and TIS-B).
Avidyne Helping Autonomous Piloting Efforts
The future of autonomous urban air mobility—vehicles aside—rests on two major elements: “AI [artificial intelligence], and a full-time, mission-critical data connection between ground and the vehicle; the whole model for how they’re operated depends on full-time access to connectivity.” That was the message from Dan Schwinn, founder and CEO of Avidyne, yesterday at EAA AirVenture’s Breakfast with Innovators.
Schwinn said Avidyne recently began working with Daedalean AI, a Swiss company developing autonomous flight controls for “electric personal aircraft of the near future.” Earlier this month, Daedalean mounted sophisticated cameras on an Avidyne Cessna 180, and Schwinn flew multiple approaches to gather data the company will use to create algorithms for teaching an AI system how to pilot an aircraft.
Some 155 companies are currently working on such systems using a variety of models, Schwinn said, all “attempting to determine what the winning configurations are going to be.”
Short of piloting an aircraft, such AI systems “might be useful for the aftermarket as a safety-increasing retrofit” as a pilot’s assistant, for example, recognizing airports in difficult visual conditions. “Autonomy is not black and white,” Schwinn said. “There are all kinds of autonomy functions.”
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