[HN Gopher] U.S. Air Force Evaluating Pivotal's Blackfly Ultrali...
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U.S. Air Force Evaluating Pivotal's Blackfly Ultralight EVTOL
Aircraft
Author : rbanffy
Score : 63 points
Date : 2024-03-04 16:46 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.futureflight.aero)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.futureflight.aero)
| giantg2 wrote:
| They're doing some sort of voodoo for this to be part 103. It's
| significantly overweight, so they classified it as amphibious.
| Yet there's no demonstration of those capabilities. Even so, they
| must be pretty generous with their safety equipment weight
| exclusions as it's still damn heavy.
|
| It would be nice if they would allow electric part 103 to use a
| credit of the max fuel load of a gas powered 103 to offset
| battery weight. I have no idea if that's involved here. But I do
| see a discrepancy that empty vs gross weight is about a 250 lb
| difference but they state a max pilot weight of 200 lb.
| BWStearns wrote:
| My guess is they are leaning heavily on the fact that it's
| "amphibious" and can count a large portion of the hull weight
| as a pontoon essentially.
| eVTOL6 wrote:
| No voodoo there. Refer to FAA's Advisory Circular, AC-103.7:
| https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...
|
| Ultralight base allowable empty weight: 254 lbs Allowance for
| wing outrigger floats 10lbs x 4(?) 40 lbs* Allowance for whole
| aircraft parachute 24 lbs Allowance for amphibious fuselage 30
| lbs x 1 30 lbs Allowable empty weight 348 lbs
|
| The way its written, looks like they could take up to 120 lbs
| for floats, but only needed 10 to make the cutoff.
|
| Part 103 makes no discrimination about operator mass. It only
| specs empty weight with an allowance for fuel. To your point,
| battery technology gets no credit.
|
| They posted a video on linkedin showing waterborne take offs
| and landings (see it about 45s into the video).
| https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7165474...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Interesting, I wasn't able to find that video on their site
| or YouTube. I did see that the water landing capability is
| _advertised as being for emergencies only_ on their site.
| Perhaps that 's why it's not prominent. Definitely bending
| the rules (not necessarily a bad thing in this case) if the
| manufacturer says not to use it as amphibious and the
| regulations require it to be capable of repeated takeoffs and
| landings from water. Technically the FAA can ask you to
| demonstrate the amphibious capabilities. What do you say to
| them, I'm not allowed to per the manufacturer?
|
| "Part 103 makes no discrimination about operator mass."
|
| My point wasn't about part 103 but about a discrepancy in
| their advertised numbers. Looks like there are a bunch of
| different numbers out there since it was still experimental.
| It seems the website officially lists 348 lbs empty weight
| and 220 lbs pilot max weight.
|
| 348 lbs is the max you listed, and the empty weight listed on
| their site. They are right at the limit.
| causi wrote:
| Twenty minutes of flight time is reasonable for a drone with
| swappable batteries. It seems next to useless for manned flight.
| In comparison the cheapest airplane, the Cessna 175 Skylark, has
| a flight endurance of 4.3 hours.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Yikes that's scary. In a Cessna or similar once you get into
| your reserve (figure ~45min running time) it becomes very
| urgent to get on the ground asap. And this thing looks like it
| glides about as well as a brick.
|
| EDIT: worth quoting:
|
| > it can fly at a cruise speed of 55 knots to a range of about
| 20 miles (32 kilometers) with 20 percent battery reserves left
|
| That's _four minutes_ of "reserve power" lmao. Absolutely not,
| no thanks.
|
| EDIT: to put this into perspective, if you're flying at 7500ft
| and you hit your 4min reserve, you would need to fly _straight
| down_ at over 20mph, and then aggressively slow your descent
| during the last few seconds in order to not die.
| porphyra wrote:
| On the bright side, it seems like it can land anywhere and
| doesn't require a runway.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| It sure can land anywhere, and once those batteries die
| you'll have a very high likelihood estimate of exactly when
| and where it'll do so ;)
| nosequel wrote:
| Like a helicopter, but with way less range, payload, and
| capabilities.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| With no landing gear, it can only land on soft surfaces
| without damaging itself. The pilot's visibility is
| compromised during landing making it dangerous to set down
| near any infrastructure that will kill you.
| maskull wrote:
| Neither the Cessna nor many helicopters (autorotation) need
| power to land. I wouldn't want to get into one of these
| e-bricks!
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| They have rather different performance characteristics, each
| can do things the other cannot. According to Wikipedia Cessna
| 175 production ceased in 1962; if that is true it's not really
| a fair comparison.
| gpm wrote:
| Seems more analogous to a helicopter than a cessna. VTOL makes
| it a lot easier to actually use this. You don't need to go to
| an airstrip - as a rich person toy that means its much more
| readibly available. As a method of transportation that means
| that opens up a lot of trips - probably primarily commuting -
| even if you are limited to 32 km range and destinations where
| you can arrange a clear area to land.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Helicopters can auto-rotate if you lose power, I'd be
| interested to see what it's like to deadstick land one of
| these. I guess that's what the whole-aircraft ballistic
| parachute system is for? IIRC in other airframes if you
| deploy that it's basically a write off.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| the dead sticking result is probably measured by meters
| below grass
| kibwen wrote:
| The good news is that, at 343 pounds when empty, they
| won't need to dig too deep to recover your body.
| pests wrote:
| They have parachutes for airplanes.
|
| edit:
|
| I didn't read the end of the comment that mentioned the
| whole-airplane system already, apologies.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Right, but if you deploy the parachute you can kiss your
| airplane goodbye. It's totalled at that point and will
| never fly again. So in this case that's a $190k decision.
| Why not instead just fly an airplane (or helicopter) that
| is good at _being an aircraft_? If your budget is $190k
| you have some incredible options available.
| pests wrote:
| I mean, people buy airplanes AND an airplane parachute
| already - there's a reason for it, even if it just means
| a bigger chance of personal survival.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Right, but (at least in normal aircraft) an engine-out
| situation doesn't (usually) immediately mean "pull the
| chute right now or we'll die". Instead the chute a last
| resort where the the alternative is unpleasant enough
| that you're willing to trade your aircraft to avoid it
| (e.g. you're staring down a situation where the aircraft
| will be destroyed anyway--think going down in trees,
| mountain cliffs, buildings, water, ...).
|
| In other words, in a normal aircraft you still have
| options when you lose power.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Autorotation depends on rotor inertia and rotor pitch
| control.
|
| These companies don't do pitch control because if they
| could, they'd build a helicopter or an Osprey analog, and
| fixed pitch rotors must be low inertia to slew thrust
| quickly.
|
| So no autorotation.
| tivert wrote:
| > Shortly after Pivotal officially launched sales of its single-
| seat personal aerial vehicle--a recreational eVTOL aircraft that
| requires no license to fly--the company's "tilt-aircraft"
| architecture has garnered some attention from the U.S. Air Force.
| ... Recreational pilots (licensed or not) can order the Pivotal
| Helix aircraft online at a starting price of $190,000. Because
| the aircraft complies with the FAA's Part 103 rules for
| ultralight aircraft, operators do not need a pilot's license to
| legally fly it
|
| I was really surprised that was possible, but this seems to
| describe the regulatory situation:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultralight_aircraft_(United_St....
| 0134340 wrote:
| I thought the same being that you have to have a license just
| to fly a drone in the US, as long as it's non-recreational, of
| course.
| gurumeditations wrote:
| Would anyone here have any pointers to info on man sized EVTOL
| design and development here?
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Consider the problem you're trying to solve first. Generally
| speaking, your problem would be better served by a type of
| aircraft (or non-aircraft approach) that already exists.
| rgmerk wrote:
| Hmmm. No expert here but wouldn't that thing be target practice
| for a MANPAD in war?
| porphyra wrote:
| I think it's even vulnerable to small arms fire. It's slow, low
| altitude, has miniscule range, and is manned, making it a much
| bigger target than drones.
| Etheryte wrote:
| It doesn't have to be that way though. Look at this like a
| PoC. Drop the electrics and the batteries in favor of regular
| motors, drop the pilot in favor of remote control or self-
| flying, and you have a vehicle that might be great for
| logistics in heavily mined areas. Mines are something that
| we've seen a lot in the war in Ukraine, some estimate that
| with modern technology it will take hundreds of years to
| demine what the Russians have put down. So having ways to
| avoid that to an extent could be extremely lucrative.
| hacoo wrote:
| Agree, this thing would get shredded by small arms. If it's
| going into combat zones, it will probably be in a drone
| configuration.
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| From the POV of someone adjacent to defense stuff, the DoD has
| been in a bit of a tech-curious analysis cycle. They're probably
| not interested in putting guns on this thing as currently
| outfitted, but rather they want to see if this novel approach has
| any potential applications worth further developing. It's not a
| particularly capable system, but the USAF and USN are currently
| looking at a whole slew of VTOL systems and this one is both much
| simpler and much cheaper than any of them. If an arrangement like
| this is fielded it's probably not as a human rated system but as
| a large forward deployed combat or logistics drone.
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(page generated 2024-03-04 23:00 UTC)