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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

#471

Post by pbronez »

callalex wrote: post #282
n_ermosh wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep! lots of interesting stuff indeed! Our plane will be ~7 gph at cruise burning unleaded fuels and fly ~170mph over the ground (with no wind)

That’s only 25 mpg which is widely considered to be unacceptably unsustainable even in the short term.

A Quick Look at FuelEconomy.gov shows many modern cars for sale with highway efficiency of 25mpg or less. Some (many?) people may judge it unconscionable, but it’s clearly acceptable to the broader market and current regulations.

These models seem to be big (Volkswagen Atlas, Subaru Ascent, Ford F150) or fast (Audi RS5, Porche 911, Kia Stinger). If you can get similar mpg from an airplane that carries four people and their luggage at 100+ mph ground speed on a more direct (shorter) route… that’s very compelling to me.

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/PowerSearch.do?action=noform...

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

#472

Post by FabHK »

n_ermosh wrote: post #124
moffkalast wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the industry was selling 10x the number of GA planes it does today, so I imagine 10x more were flying as well.

I'm pretty sure most of these planes from the 1970s are still merrily flying around!

The wikipedia article on the 1994 General Aviation Revitalization Act has a graph showing the astonishing drop in shipped aircraft (and the rise in unit cost!) since around 1980:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Revitalizatio...

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

#473

Post by Stevvo »

jay-barronville wrote: post #463
EncomLab wrote: post #456

Great ideas - all destined to wither and die on the vine of certification and regulatory approval. A certified Dynon autopilot for a Cessna 172 starts at $26k just for the components - you expect a similar amount for installation and then ongoing maintenance, calibration, and servicing. Designing and building the technology is the easy part - pushing that technology through testing and certification is the very hard…

Have you considered that maybe Airhart and its founders have thought through those inevitable hurdles and decided to push forward anyway? Even if they don’t ultimately succeed, so what? This is how true innovation happens—someone decides to take a chance on an idea/concept everyone else thinks is impossible or unrealistic. There are innovators and then there are armchair critics who just tell the innovators all of th…

Look at their staff; all engineers, nobody there who has ever got anything past the FAA.

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

#474

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

aeternum wrote: post #337
sokoloff wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the vast majority of GA accidents could be completely avoided with slightly better avionics. Reading accident reports or the annual summary McSpadden Report (previously called the Nall Report), I get a different view: if pilots would keep fuel in the airplane and flowing to the engine(s), not fly into weather beyond the capability of the airplane and crew, and divert or not takeoff at the onset of signs that an air…

Most cars give you significant warnings that you're about to run out of gas and as a result very few people do. Improved avionics could warn you that you're flying into a storm or that the airplane is not airworthy or that you are converging with other traffic. Complacency kills because it sneaks up on pilots, but it doesn't have to be that way. We should not accept that the FAA's answer is an IMSAFE checklist. Pilot…

>Most cars give you significant warnings that you're about to run out of gas and as a result very few people do.

You will see accident reports where the problem is that the pilot just completely failed to put enough fuel in the airplane and then flew it until it ran out; but that's not the typical thing.

What's much more common is that the pilot takes off with what seems like ample fuel, gets halfway there, discovers weather that is worse than expected, has to fly lower than planned, burns a lot more fuel as a result, discovers that they will have to refuel, can't find an airport with good weather at which to land, and ends up flying a graveyard spiral into a fatal crash caused by disorientation in conditions for which they are not trained.

The majority of accidents are traceable to poor planning or decision-making once airborne; and I tend to agree with the other poster that improved avionics are not going to make a really big difference.

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

#475

Post by baggachipz »

EncomLab wrote: post #456

Great ideas - all destined to wither and die on the vine of certification and regulatory approval. A certified Dynon autopilot for a Cessna 172 starts at $26k just for the components - you expect a similar amount for installation and then ongoing maintenance, calibration, and servicing. Designing and building the technology is the easy part - pushing that technology through testing and certification is the very hard…

> Then a doped up former major league pitcher decides to hop in your plane and fly it into the ocean and everything you have done is called into question and you end up buried in lawsuits.

Here's what I don't understand. If the same meathead pitcher gets in his Ferrari and drives it into a tree, nobody questions the car company or buries them in lawsuits. Driver crashes car, it's their fault.

So wouldn't it stand to reason that aviation evolve into the 21st century by eliminating much of the red tape? Sure, cars are required to leverage new technology to enhance safety (e.g. mandating back-up cameras), and the same should apply to an aviation world which treats aircraft as they are: cars in three dimensions rather than two.

All that red tape was necessary when flying was extremely dangerous with primitive technology. We now have the means, through continuous enhancement, to make a "safe enough" aircraft and offload some of the risk on the driver.

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

#477

Post by nmc »

Tade0 wrote: post #450
epolanski wrote: post #239

It'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…

It's not actually cost-efficient if you take into account one factor: demographics, or specifically: staffing. A crew member of a train has a very demanding job. The shifts are highly irregular and you may have to spend the night far from home. In this regard it's even worse than flying. Someone has to maintain the infrastructure, which by its very nature can also be in remote places. Particularly busy railroad cross…

You cannot make the cost-efficiency argument without acknowledging all the costs which aviation and automotive travel externalize: air and water pollution, damage to wildlife, global warming, lack of walking/cycling infrastructure, rising sea levels... a disproportionate part of which are born by poor or faraway people who have no choice in all this.

Edit: forgot about noise pollution and about flooding risks (due to impervious surfaces like runways and parking lots).

I also doubt airfields and planes require significantly less maintenance than trains and tracks, but I have not researched that.

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

#478

Post by hoosieree »

robin_reala wrote: post #371
dartharva wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't take a train to anywhere you want. Tracks will always be less accessible than roads or the sky.

You can’t land wherever you want in a plane? I’m two minutes walk to my local station, and a 15 minute drive to the nearest airfield.

You can land a plane anywhere you want. Once.

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

#479

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

windexh8er wrote: post #129
sethkim wrote: 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 e…

The barrier to entry for learning to fly is literally a few hundred dollars for a discovery flight. You don't need to do any preparation and you will actually fly the plane the first time up. A discovery flight is flight training, and it goes in your log book.

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

#480

Post by gizajob »

Aachen wrote: post #435
gizajob wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet despite airlines not being able to do it, it happened.

I think you understand the nonliteral meaning here

But also train tracks and infrastructure aren’t exactly free of mess all across the landscape. Flights can be had for as low as €20, which yeah, makes no sense at all.
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