personal aircraft

2 Articles

Safety Not Guaranteed: Flying Motorcycle Might Be Coming Soon

June 12, 2022 by 50 Comments

According to [Victor Tangermann] over at Futurism, JetPack Aviation is showing a prototype of its P2 Speeder flying motorcycle and it looks both awesome and — to quote Ralph Nader — unsafe at any speed. The prototype can lift 1,000 pounds, travel at up to 500 miles per hour, and cover up to 400 miles. We assume those things are not at the same time, of course.

As you might expect, the thing isn’t FAA-approved yet and we wonder if it ever will be. The company plans remote control flights later this year and, even later, actual piloted flights. You can see more from Mayman Aerospace which is related to JetPack (which, of course, makes jet packs).

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Henry Smolinski And The Flying Pinto

January 5, 2016 by 33 Comments

Anyone who has ever been stuck in gridlock has probably daydreamed about pushing a button on the dashboard that turns their car into a plane. Imagine how much more relaxing a weekend getaway would be if you could take to the open sky instead hitting the congested highway. For as long as there have been aircraft and automobiles, man has tried to combine the two. The proper term for this marriage is ‘roadable aircraft’, and a successful one requires attention to the aerodynamics of flight as well as the rigors of motoring.

One promising attempt at a roadable aircraft came from Henry Smolinski, an aeronautical engineer in Van Nuys, California. He along with his friend Harold Blake started a company in 1971 called Advanced Vehicle Engineers (AVE) to produce the AVE Mizar. This flying car combined the lightweight Ford Pinto with the wings and partial fuselage of a Cessna Skymaster.

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