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Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

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121–130 of 632 posts

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#121

Congrats on the launch! > The core of what makes a good pilot isn’t stick and rudder skills; it’s good decision making and risk management. At best, this is only half of the story. What separates GA operations from airline operations in terms of safety is much more involved than that: - GA (Part 91) flight hours are not recorded so safety data can only be estimated - Part 91 incidents follow much less scrutiny than p…

thanks!

> In practically every example so far in aviation, adding automation makes things harder, not easier.

While somewhat unsatisfying as an answer, I think the industry has done it wrong, exactly because the result was harder, not easier. the UI/UX of modern glass cockpits is incredibly unintuitive and difficult to use. It's extremely opaque as to what the system's actually doing, if much. And no one has truly tackled the core problem of stopping our less trained, less rigorous part 91 pilots from losing control of their airplanes.

We definitely recognize that this creates a new failure mode. However, we're address those failure modes with redundant systems and following the same engineering standards as commercial aircraft. Many of them fly pure fly-by-wire and rely on the probably of a total electrical failure to be extremely low. We are doing the same.

If everything really does fail, there's the full airframe parachute to bring the airplane to the ground as a final layer of safety

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agreed. I'd love a high speed rail system in the US. but we're engineers not politicians :)

[flagged]

I don't think that's fair. While I don't think personal aircraft is a net good, both things can be worked on at the same time.

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#124
post #83

Instrument-rated pilot (and engineer) here. First - congrats on the launch! I think you're working on an interesting set of components that will prove useful to GA aircraft technology. Bringing fly-by-wire, and lowering the cost of maintenance/manufacturing are both great efforts. That being said, my personal view is that stick-and-rudder control is one of the less critical components to improving GA safety. Everythi…

The current systems seem to be all designed around there only being minimal air traffic, as it was in the past. People talking one on one with ATC, everything being done on a plane by plane basis. Can that really continue to function if traffic increases a few orders of magnitude? I mean hell, imagine everyone having to ask the city car controller for permission to back their car out of their driveway, state their ro…

In the 70s when a lot of this system was designed, the industry was selling 10x the number of GA planes it does today, so I imagine 10x more were flying as well. So we have the capability for an order of magnitude increase. We'll need more controllers, sure.

But, you are totally right, we need to move away from voice based ATC to more digital systems that allow a management of more aircraft, and allow the GA aircraft to manage themselves through a "peer to peer" type ATC system, but like we have with our cars.

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#125
post #83

Instrument-rated pilot (and engineer) here. First - congrats on the launch! I think you're working on an interesting set of components that will prove useful to GA aircraft technology. Bringing fly-by-wire, and lowering the cost of maintenance/manufacturing are both great efforts. That being said, my personal view is that stick-and-rudder control is one of the less critical components to improving GA safety. Everythi…

Agreed! Learning how to fly alone is the easy part. The hard part is all the rest.

Also, this is inconsistent:

> large commercial airplane technology has developed to the point that the planes practically fly themselves

> We think stick and rudder skills are definitely a necessity for airline pilots flying hundreds of people on board for the extremely rare cases where emergencies do happen and many people's lives are at risk

So which is it? Do modern airplanes fly themselves or not? Pilots need to be able to fly. All pilots. Otherwise everyone's at risk.

Some of the worst recent accidents happenend when under-trained (AF 447) or misinformed (737 MAX) pilots didn't have a clear mental picture of what the airplane was doing.

It would seem this is solving for the wrong problem.

And the whole paragraph about "sexyness", aluding to sports cars and iPhones, seems very wrong to me. What makes flying sexy is the nerdiness, the skills involved, not shiny control surfaces.

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#126

> In the US, trips that are 50-300 miles are almost all done by car because that distance is too short for commercial airlines and too far for public transportation. A bit off-topic but this is a political problem, not a technical one. Trips of 50-300 miles are certainly within the operating range of fast and efficient rail travel as demonstrated in multiple places around the world outside of the US.

Was about to post the same. Passing no judgement on this particular project, which must have been the result of honest hard work and dedication, but it's truly bizarre that people in the US would rather double down on the failed personal vehicle concept rather than embracing public transit, as more developed countries have.

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#127

As you probably know, there is actually a lot of innovation already going on in the Experimental category. Fuel Injection, FADEC systems, advanced engine computers, terrain avoidance, synthetic vision, electronic trim, and so on. I built a Van's two-seater, and the technology I have up with me is night and day different from where we were 20 years ago, let alone 40. Are you going the experimental / kit build route, o…

We are starting in experimental, working with Sling Aircraft for the airframe, factory build assist, etc to prove out the exact product that we want to take to certification in the future.

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#128

What are the environmental implications of transitioning people traveling by car/train to small planes? In addition to being louder and dispersing pollutants over a wider area, don't small planes generate significantly more GHG emissions than cars over the same number of miles? Also, given that planes are not nearly as easy to electrify as cars and trains (energy density is significantly lower in batteries than liqui…

It's not just a question of whether they generate more GHG per mile, it's a question of whether they generate more GHG per hour. You wouldn't make a thousand mile trip over the weekend by car, but people don't bat an eye doing it by plane.

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#129
post #83

Instrument-rated pilot (and engineer) here. First - congrats on the launch! I think you're working on an interesting set of components that will prove useful to GA aircraft technology. Bringing fly-by-wire, and lowering the cost of maintenance/manufacturing are both great efforts. That being said, my personal view is that stick-and-rudder control is one of the less critical components to improving GA safety. Everythi…

> It may sound snobby - but I'm not super excited about the idea of lowering the barrier to entry for GA on a foundational skill basis. Like the light-sport rating, it encourages more people to be in the (already congested) airspace system who haven't really gained all the other skills necessary or experience to be there.

I'm not a pilot, but I've always wanted to go down the path. In theory - this should be rather exciting to a person like myself so as to lower the barrier to entry and allow me to just start. In fact I don't really like the idea of this and my first thought was: "this seems like the plane that other pilots hate" simply because of a lowered barrier to entry and new breed of "lazy" pilots. I could be 100% wrong.

The thing that turns me off from this is that when I do chart the path I want to learn and be able to do - the traditional way. And in fact I don't want to rely on software or inconsistent controls vs the norm. I'm all for the idea of making the cockpit easier to navigate and have situational awareness, but I'm not a fan of abstractions as much as I used to be.

So as a non-pilot who aspires to become one in the next decade I agree with the parent comment in that I do really hope the goal is not to lower the bar to become a pilot.

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#130
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't the US govt buy back any land they want for infrastructure? I mean forcibly buy back.

Yes, it's called eminent domain. But if the government attempts to do so you can file a lawsuit and argue that they don't have a right to purchase your property from you. These lawsuits are expensive and take a lot of time/effort, which makes building a railway impractical by this method. To "solve" this politically would require a constitutional amendment, which is obviously not going to happen for this issue.

But, as a previous poster said, these problems always seem solveable when building a freeway.
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