491–500 of 632 posts
How can the solution be worse cars rather than better public transport?
I 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…
Another example is the new 406 MHz ELTs; it's not clear how effective ELTs are at saving lives, despite their 'obvious' utility, but now the price is higher, they have batteries that require replacing and only expensive manufacturer-approved ones at that, it replaces a system that was working fine and offers no additional utility to the end-user who may be dead after it activates.
It is not even the above example that will bring down GA, it is the death by a thousand cuts, from NIMBYs moving next to ancient airports and shutting them down, to functionaries dragging their feet on lead-free fuels leading to an environmental crisis, to under-staffing of control towers so GA traffic is forcibly reduced, and so on. So the GA community, like with the gun control debate, has to take a give-an-inch, take-a-mile attitude towards regulation.
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> 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 By that logic, shouldn't we make driving cars as dangerous, complicated, inaccesible, and confusing as possible?
Only manual transmissions would really cut down on texting and driving.
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Most GA aircraft used for travel have autopilots. Even most flight school aircraft used for IFR training have them, at least in my experience in the northeast.
GA planes can’t land themselves, the autopilot they share in common is more like cruise control.
The main reason it can't fully land itself is the lack of autothrottle and FADEC. But some GA planes do have even that. For example the Cirrus Vision (very light jet) is also a GA aircraft and has an emergency function where a passenger can trigger an emergency landing at the closest airport (as well as having a rescue parachute too)
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…
as someone trained in usability design, it was a nightmare learning to use those maps and learning the minefield thats is to talk to a tower about approach and such. indeed you are extremely correct. i never broke a sweat with stick and rudder (i did read THE book before classes!) even on first touch and go landings! but everything else that involved towers, weather, other planes, radio, and those damn maps! so much…
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its pretty easy to drive a car. press pedal car go vroom turn wheel car go right not the same for flying a plane
But presumably you're talking about a modern automatic car? What about a manual car, where you need more understanding of the mechanics, and will stall or roll back on a hill if you don't? Or a manual car without synchromesh, where you have to double de-clutch to match the input and output shaft RPMs? Or a car without antilock brakes? Or without tire pressure sensors? Or automatic headlights? Or automatic wipers? Or…
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…
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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…
This "armchair critic" was an engineer at VisionAire Corp. in the late 90's and watched a truly innovative aircraft and company be consumed by the red tape and outright corporate protectionism of the regulatory bureaucracy. Not only have I considered it - I lived it. What relevant experience do you bring to this discussion?
> Have you considered that maybe Airhart and its founders have thought through those inevitable hurdles and decided to push forward anyway?
Do you genuinely think you’re the first person to tell them all of the reasons why they’re going to fail?
Wouldn’t it be much more useful to try to understand, in good faith, why they’re pushing forward with this venture anyway despite all of the hurdles in their future?
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If you succeed in making this all easy, won’t these small airports fill up with planes?
We will eventually hit a limit to the current infrastructure, but based on where the GA market was in the 70s when a lot of the small airports were built, we estimate we can handle ~10x the number of planes we do today.