How does this compare to the 200k + engine https://www.darkaero.com/aircraft ?
Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
321–330 of 632 posts
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#322I was shocked when learning to fly how much GA tech was stuck in some weird pre-World War II era state. Everything seems so needlessly complicated. Even small aircraft cost so much that I couldn’t imagine a computer controlled system and fly by wire would be cost prohibitive. Even a new C172 is close to $400k at the low end, and anything you’d actually want to fly is much more. A few grand in electronics seems worth…
I would only add that if people have an interest in aviation then gliding is a fun gateway, and relatively inexpensive. As a student it felt like a lot of money (an aerotow might cost 40-50 pounds), but a year subscription to my old airfield cost about 1.5 hours of powered instruction time, flying is cheap on top of that. You get very good at understanding how an aircraft handles and I like the club aspect. It's real…
Yes! As a PPL that recently picked up gliding, I hugely recommend it. It’s a proper sport with a super high skill ceiling, supportive clubs, and competitions/racing when you’re ready. In studying for the glider rating, you’ll cover quite a bit that’s also applicable to flying “power”.
Plus, the economics are great. I bought a glider earlier this year for about 15k. I recently flew 5 hours from a $50 aerotow to 2500ft on a weak day and had a blast fighting my way around the course I was trying to fly. That’s compared to the $170/hr my club Cessna rents for, and which is nowhere close in terms of joy-per-hour.
Airplanes are for transportation, gliders are for sport!
Find a club near you (US): https://www.ssa.org/where-to-fly-map/
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#323> I also built autonomous aircraft when I was a student at Cornell
You should urgently pivot to strictly autonomous vehicles, airborne or otherwise. Waymos are here and now, they are at least as impactful as GLP-1s and LLMs.
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#324So 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…
How do you make it easy to stay proficient? For example you say your plane will never stall, will your pilots train stall recognition and recovery regularly? How will prevent something like what happened to AF447?
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#325It's insane the length we go as humans (in the US at least) to not invest in the easiest, most cost-effective and environmentally friendly mode of transportation: trains. Hyperloops, wider and wider highways, now personal airplanes. Anything but goddamn trains. It's mental to me. Wish the best to the startup, after all they are filling a void someone else would, but still, not happy with the direction transport is go…
Trains are for freight, and they are exceedingly good at it.
The rest of the world would like to disagree.
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#326Since this view seems underrepresented here, I'll say I'd just as soon see the number of aircraft in the sky stay at right about what it is now, not more.
Having random tech bros flying overhead is not an anxiety reducing phenomenon.
On the other hand, taking the other side of this, what you're working on seems long overdue.
I would suggest building for the future (electric). Yeah as you said batteries are not ready yet, but think about it, you should be thinking forward to a time when they are. As an analogy, people in YC today are not just designing products that will be using today's AI. They are designing products that will be using the AI of a year, two years, from now. And you should be working this way too. And with electric, the drivetrain will be way more reliable and people like me who wonder if you're going to dribble gas on my house will have less to worry about.
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#327I 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…
You're definitely right that the cross continental trip is a big and common one. however, 90% of long distance trips are made by car in the US with a median trip distance of about 200 miles. If we can make flying as easy as driving, the ability to make that trip in half to a third of the time, we believe that's a big win and incentive for a lot of people. There are 19,000 small airports in the US and 300M people live…
I guess I don't see a whole lot of value in spending thousands and thousands of dollars for a few short trips. I think that the underserved market is the well to do person that doesn't live near a major hub international airport like Ohio or Nebraska or Iowa and they want to be able to fly direct on their schedule and they can't just head to the airport and fly direct wherever they want for a few hundred dollars instead of having to bounce through a hub and being at the mercy of the airlines schedule.
But I think the main reason why people don't do that who can't afford a multi-million dollar private jet is that if you take a compass circle and draw it around your location with the range of your average GA aircraft anywhere that's not on the east or west coast you get 4 or 5 cities that you aren't likely to travel to anyways. America is just too big a place for these types of aircraft.
Plus, while there may be all these airports that you are mentioning, can you really count on getting fuel to take you back at these minor airports or the FBOs to service outside a much shorter list of airports? That cuts the range away even more.
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#328Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
Excellent points, it's really these other aspects that get pilots into trouble. For example it's crazy that most pilots are still taught to calculate W&B using printed charts and approximate takeoff performance. I think you could save more general aviation lives with a fairly minimal system. A gas gauge sensor that calculates whether you have enough fuel to get to your destination + reserve. Avionics where you input…
> For example it's crazy that most pilots are still taught to calculate W&B using printed charts and approximate takeoff performance. We're taught that so we know what we're doing. Then we open our iPhone app (EFB or electronic flightbag) and do it there. In fact, part of the reason we do it there is because most of them phone home to their maker and log that we did it. So if there's an accident people can know "well…
> But again, it's not that we can't do those things, it's just that they're completely cost prohibitive.
Isn’t this what the OP is referring to when he says the current market can’t support the necessary innovation? As I understand it the idea here is to expand the market and spread certification costs out over more planes.
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm going to be calling my local government representatives to raise it back up by two with taxes and fees. Sometimes I think this sort of approach is why so many people on the right are sick of global warming. Sure, global warming is a serious problem, but that doesn't mean that taxing things you don't like is wise, fair, effective, or in any other respect a good idea. If you have a problem with emission of gasses…
Burning fossil fuels is the problem. We can argue until the cows come home about things like plastic straws and bags, but the fact is that burning fossil fuels is rapidly destroying the planet and no amount of burning is sustainable. Banning that is table stakes.
Proposing to ban burning fossil fuels entirely is a great way to get very little support for your proposal.