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

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

#21

Post by n_ermosh »

talldayo wrote: post #10
n_ermosh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way we see it isn't less training, but training focused on the most important parts of flying: decision making and risk management. Given the current track record for accidents, they almost always culminate in the pilot failing to control the airplane, whether due to directly stalling or being distracted by another issue and then stalling. By eliminating loss of control as a failure mode, pilots can spend more of…

> By eliminating loss of control as a failure mode I think this is a flawed view of the problem, even with an industry-grade FCS to work with. If you're in the air, you should know how to break out of a stall, belly-land in an emergency, or route around turbulence as it crops up. These things happen , and preventing someone from doing a loop-de-loop won't eliminate a category of failure-modes. This is something I ver…

Most accidents occur because the pilot makes a bad decision somewhere and a chain of events leads to an accident (in GA--commercial is a completely different beast). Our hope is to break that chain by making it as easy as possible for the pilot to continue flying the airplane and bring it safely to the ground in a high-stress emergency.

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

#22

Post by n_ermosh »

user_7832 wrote: post #15

I love the concept, as an aviation nerd (and hopefully future GA pilot). However I'm a little cautious - understanding weather particularly is massively different from moving in 2 dimensions and you can't land "anywhere", unlike how you can pull over. And the average person who doesn't know much about the weather isn't likely to know what a microburst is or why it's dangerous. I'd recommend pitching this to (new) pil…

Thanks! Our early adopters are a combination of new pilots, those that have already begun the training process, and even some experienced ones that want a better, safer flying experience

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

#23

Post by bronco21016 »

So basically a GA Airbus. I think this is a pretty cool project, and while it may not achieve the lofty goals you’ve set forth, any improvement in safety is worthwhile.

As other commenters have point out though, where this stuff falls short is ultimately still the human. Ok, great… your aircraft won’t stall in Normal Law. However you’ve now lost a generator and a whole FCC and you’re in direct law. The 400 hr pilot hasn’t actually flown a plane with direct input since their primary training 5 years ago. They also don’t remember what the different flight envelopes do and do not provide. Essentially the system is more complex but normally it works so the complexity is hidden. They’re not equipped to handle flying the airplane anymore.

This is where GA really ultimately falls short IMHO, proficiency. Airlines are the safest they’ve ever been because the pilots make an entire career out of being prepared for every contingency. People using airplanes as a personal travel tool can be trained and proficient to the same degree but often they are not because flying an aircraft is ancillary to their primary mission.

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

#24

Post by n_ermosh »

mritchie712 wrote: post #16
daft_pink wrote: post #7

I disagree with your assessment. I think that the core problem with GA is that most people in the United States want to travel distances beyond what an affordable GA aircraft can in a single flight. I live in the midwest and I generally want to travel to the East or West coast or Southwest or Florida and the range of a Cessna just isn’t going to cut it. The only practical vehicle would be a Phenom 300 or Honda Jet II…

I might be over estimating, but I'd also think taking off and landing will tack on a few hours to the start and end of your trip. Fueling, safety checks, dealing with the control tower, etc. all seem like they'd effectively take your time savings to zero.

once you get to wanting to travel about 150 miles, the time savings do start kicking in, even if you assume 30-45 minutes of getting to the airport, preflight, etc. The benefit of a small airplane is that at small airports, getting from walking up to the airplane and then into the air can be pretty quick. And part of our goal is the automate as much of the prelight process as possible, wherever we can do it safely

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

#26

Post by n_ermosh »

pricechild wrote: post #18

Howdy! FI(H) here. Looks very cool, I watched the video too. Many students get the hang of hovering within 10 hours - "learning to fly" really isn't that hard? I see the rest of the course as "learning to become a pilot." That means the background knowledge and practice to allow decision making & dealing with emergencies etc. I think if you could improve just a single one of the problems you touch on (difficult contr…

You are definitely correct that "learning to become a pilot" is the meat of training. Our belief is that we want to make the continued act of "aviating" as easy as possible so that pilots can focus on the decision making aspect of being a pilot, and when doing so, not let the airplane get ahead of them and cause an accident.

Basically, you can't command the plane to do anything it can't safely do. If you pull the stick full back, you'll just climb at your maximum safe angle of attack. Hold the stick full right, you'll be turning at a 45 degree bank. Compared to todays planes, which you have to actively be on top of and "ahead of" the entire them they are being flown.

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

#27

Post by stetrain »

> 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.

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

#28

Post by n_ermosh »

bronco21016 wrote: post #23

So basically a GA Airbus. I think this is a pretty cool project, and while it may not achieve the lofty goals you’ve set forth, any improvement in safety is worthwhile. As other commenters have point out though, where this stuff falls short is ultimately still the human. Ok, great… your aircraft won’t stall in Normal Law. However you’ve now lost a generator and a whole FCC and you’re in direct law. The 400 hr pilot h…

Thanks!

you're totally correct that emergencies are where the real issues lie. That's why we've built in multiple layers of fault tolerance so that a generator failure or a flight computer failure doesn't immediately revert you to a direct law control scheme (I'm assuming you're familiar with Airbus control laws given that you're using those phrases)

On top of everything, small GA aircraft have the luxury of being to use a ballistic parachute (which we will have) to bring the entire airframe to the ground in the event of a complete system failure. Which is always better than just letting the airplane crash into the ground.

I agree that proficiency is a fundamental issue. We want to make it easy to be and stay proficient. If flying becomes part of the primary mission, you do it more often and as a result stay proficient. The most dangerous pilots are the ones who haven't flown in 3 years and jump into a plane for an IFR cross country to an airport they've never been to before. We don't want that to happen either.

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

#29

Post by BWStearns »

Always happy to see new GA aircraft, and the tech here looks very cool. The emergency autoland and chute will definitely be lifesavers. If your system can reliably prevent base-final stall spins then that would clearly be awesome.

One thing that jumped out at me is what are you trading to get that protection? While I have no issues with fly by wire, I'd be nervous about a GA aircraft that's overly opinionated about what it should be doing vs how to do it.

* Can I put it into a forward slip, or will it refuse or return to coordinated flight? This could be critical in an engine related emergency where you're too high and can't or don't want to risk getting farther from the airport.

* If I need to make a steep turn to avoid someone heading the wrong way on base is it going to let me?

I see the value in stall prevention but, outside of stall spin on final, that's largely been solved in GA via passive aero design characteristics making it tough to stall and harder to stay stalled.

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

#30

Post by n_ermosh »

stetrain wrote: post #27

> 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.

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