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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

#41

Post by rglullis »

n_ermosh wrote: post #30
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 :)

[flagged]

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

#42

Post by n_ermosh »

consumer451 wrote: post #38

Really cool to see people working on tough problems. Are you building your own FADEC system, or working with existing engine control systems?

thanks!

initially we'll be working with existing systems (specifically, a Rotax 916iS) which has an almost-FADEC, but we're adding our own systems on top of it to add push to start, full control of the throttle, automated restart in the case of an engine failure in flight, and full data collection to better predict when maintenance is going to be needed.

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

#43

Post by BWStearns »

n_ermosh wrote: post #17
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…

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've found my GA flying to really be about trips that you _wouldn't have made otherwise_, but the biggest barrier is cost. I've done little adventure trips with my wife that were super fun and without a PPL we wouldn't have done the equivalent. But when it comes to boring stuff it's just too expensive to justify flying so the trips don't happen (since I have to rent).

My suspicion is that the middle of the Venn diagram between "can afford a $500K aircraft" and "doesn't fly GA because they're not going to stay proficient enough to be safe" is vanishingly small. The doctors who fly their Cirrus once a year think they're Maverick so they don't care about the safety features. The guys who fly every chance they get aren't the ones stall spinning on base to final.

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

#45

Post by n_ermosh »

globalise83 wrote: post #39

Presumably anyone who wants to fly this would still have to go through a traditional pilot qualification with an old-school plane? So this is actually targeting people who do fly airplanes, but want to be more comfortable and more able to focus on the navigation and general enjoyment of the air while reducing the actual risk of flying, rather than having to, as you put it, micromanage the aircraft. As someone who lik…

They don't necessarily have to learn in an old school plane. In fact, our early adopters who aren't pilots will be getting their flight training through us in an Airhart airplane (included in the purchase of the airplane)

In the near future, a new set of regulations is coming out called MOSAIC, which will allow pilots to learn how to fly purely in simplified control aircraft. This is expected to come roughly at the same time as when we begin production, so we hope that new pilots will be able to learn under these new regulations and not have to learn the old-school way of flying at all.

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

#46

Post by catchmeifyoucan »

I got my PPL a while ago, and I'm super excited about this! Though, I'm mostly a renter, so I may not be of much support to purchase at $500,000.

This would be quite the upgrade from a 1980's Cessna.

I guess we'll have to wait for the new standards, but things like learning about the engine, stall recovery and crosswinds are a pretty major part of aviation training. Though the plane can do these things, I'm not sure how much training will be abstracted away (since it's a generic curriculum and we can fly most ASEL).

Few questions:

1. Does the flight controller have a back-up?

2. What does the override for controlling rudder and aileron look like. How about spin recovery or taxing with headwinds?

3. Would you sell your avionics set-up so I can retrofit and replace a Garmin System. I've always found Garmin's to be tricky and hard to read. Yours looks waay better

4. Love the Live ATC transcriptions

Best of luck! Hoping I get to fly one of these some day.

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

#47

Post by n_ermosh »

singhuler wrote: post #44

First of, so nice to see someone solving hard problem. Best of luck to you and your team. Do you see the overcrowding of airspace as a concern at all?

Eventually, it might be. Currently, the US airspace system could handle ~10x the GA traffic we have today (I'm basing this on the fact that when we were building it up in the 70s, we were selling and flying ~10x more airplanes than we do today).

However, as we get to much larger scales, we can start using our aircraft to actually augment ATC to help handle the traffic. the airplanes can have more intelligent communication systems to coordinate with each other and the pilots and automatically send and receive data to/from ATC with digital comms rather than voice radio. That's an entirely separate project and company though when Airhart is a huge success and we hit this problem :)

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

#48

Post by dwighttk »

n_ermosh wrote: post #24
mritchie712 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you succeed in making this all easy, won’t these small airports fill up with planes?

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

#50

Post by jeffreyrogers »

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.

It's not just a political problem. It's also a legal one due to the property rights involved.
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