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Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

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Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#41

Post by darawk »

dmix wrote: post #15

> The Mountain View, California-based company calls it Heaviside, after noted physicist and electrical engineer Oliver Heaviside, who advanced a variety of theories and innovations in mathematics, electronics, and communications in the early 20th century. I like this idea of naming things after people who've contributed to the field. Mount Everest's name came from a British surveyor and geographer George Everest. Bra…

I'm also guessing that the name 'heaviside' is a reference to the Heaviside step function. Which of course, looks like a vertical takeoff, and implies that this project is a "step function" in flying transportation, etc..It's a pretty great name.

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#44

Post by grizzles »

lmetro wrote: post #30

[I've been an engineer working on this vehicle for the past 2 years.] Hi HN! It's great to see lots of interest. One big reason we went public with the project is to help with recruiting, as we're starting to scale up our hiring for lots of positions, including testing, manufacturing, and every sort of engineering that you can think of. The team is super strong technically, and is full of people with interesting back…

I guess this is the video he means: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7mc3C19kE4

I hope we see a vid with a 100kg test dummy in the chair soon.

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#45

Post by mannykannot »

lmetro wrote: post #30

[I've been an engineer working on this vehicle for the past 2 years.] Hi HN! It's great to see lots of interest. One big reason we went public with the project is to help with recruiting, as we're starting to scale up our hiring for lots of positions, including testing, manufacturing, and every sort of engineering that you can think of. The team is super strong technically, and is full of people with interesting back…

I look forward to electric airplanes, this looks like an impressive contender, and I would like to know more about it. For one thing, I see this is being flown without an occupant. Is it carrying ballast equal in weight to a person, or is it merely carrying sufficient ballast, mounted well-forward, to put the CofG within limits? And is it carrying sufficient batteries to give the quoted 100-mile range? What is its operational ceiling?

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#46

Post by e12e »

starpilot wrote: post #31
platz wrote: post #20

> On the helicopter, there’s a little bolt on top, and if you unscrew that, you take the cotter pin out, we all die.” I imagine that's hard to do while in operation. Meanwhile, a heli has autorotation, which is quite convenient in various failure modes.

Your quote refers to the "jesus nut": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_nut , which doesn't apply to newer helicopters.

I'm curious - surely there's still some single point that would let the rotor fly away? What does it mean that newer helicopters "doesn't have" this? I mean the rotor is attached? It's a single axel? There are scenarios where the rotor falls off?

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#47

Post by gonesilent »

tiredyam wrote: post #5
baybal2 wrote: post #4

I protest, totally protest. Under no circumstances let people with dotcom webdev mentality run anything really serious in aeronautics. I myself had a rather similar talk to what that the panelist had with Kitty Hawk people with a very well moneyed, but also very naive CEO of a drone delivery startup. Some sarcasm added, but it went along these lines: Me: your best bet is to make a helicopter. Men much brighter than y…

Isn’t this why they partnered with boeing? To navigate regulation and bring in more aviation expertise

Is Boeing who you would want to navigate regulatory paper work? Might be bad timing...

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#48

Post by mannykannot »

_8j50 wrote: post #25
heyflyguy wrote: post #24

Every time I see a multirotor carrying people, I think of the many times while building them at the beginning of the drone renaissance that I saw 4/6/8 bladed multirotors have an AP failure, a blade break, a speed controller overheat, etc etc and it fell out of the sky, literally. These do not have a glideslope! Sure, a ballistic chute might prevent an onboard tragedy but I continue to wonder about what the flying ca…

I don't know much about this aircraft but this appears to be a winged aircraft which unlike quadcopters and helicopters,losing an engine or rotor does not translate to a crash(?) because it had n number of rotors on each side,if one is lost,you lose altitude maybe and turn off matching rotors on the other side,which naively appears safer than a helicopter.

Wings don't help if you are below the stall speed.

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#49

Post by dchichkov »

lmetro wrote: post #30

[I've been an engineer working on this vehicle for the past 2 years.] Hi HN! It's great to see lots of interest. One big reason we went public with the project is to help with recruiting, as we're starting to scale up our hiring for lots of positions, including testing, manufacturing, and every sort of engineering that you can think of. The team is super strong technically, and is full of people with interesting back…

It'd be nice to have emergency vehicles. But, don't build hanging parkways with good views, for the privileged, please.

We've been there before - https://www.accessmagazine.org/spring-2003/putting-pleasure-... - with Robert Moses parkways, "bridges instead of tunnels" and the likes. And we've now learned - it's a mistake to put mass transportation system into the air.

(Love flying, private pilot, airplanes, sailplanes, paragliders, had been flying half of my life. Yes, really cute bird. Yes, shiny. It's a mistake to put mass transportation system into the air. It is even worse to put a private road there.)

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#50

Post by mannykannot »

duaoebg wrote: post #28

This thing must be crazy light. I wonder how much of the advertised quietness will dissapear once it gets speced for range and passengers. If they've solved a fundamental problem of noisy props I would be very impressed.

I see that, in horizontal flight, the propellers are behind the wing, and therefore in its wake. On the Piaggio Avanti, this arrangement creates quite noticable additional noise.
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