http://www.terrafugia.com/ looks a little awkward but in red with a horse on it, it could be bearable Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Good luck getting that through NSW rego. Maybe the worst of both worlds? A poor car and a poor plane.
if they'll register a Porsche I don't see the problem it's 450 NM from Brisbane to Sydney, at 100 knots this thing will get there in 4.5 hours and can then drive around town, so what if it can only do 100kph, where can you do that in the city ??!! I'd fly over the top of HWP cars honking the horn
Go through the radar trap, fold the wings out and just take off, then see if they can book you John!!
"Look up there!.. is it a bird? is it a plane? it's.. it's... WTF?" lol (its a glorified flying tadpole, or sperm.. depending which way you look at it!)
The first and last photos have a cover over the front wheel. The middle photos doesn't. Perhaps playing around with aerodynamics.
The problem with this sort of thing is that they tend to fly like a car and drive like an aircraft. Looking at it, I suspect that it might glide like a Bentley and steer like a Boeing. Getting it road registered would just be a teeny weeny bit difficult; FORS will be thrilled to help with a compliance plate, I'm sure - but getting it certificated by the FAA or CASA, in anything other than experimental category (notice the lettering on the door?), would be something of a challenge. Notice it's powered by a Rotax 912, which has a strong reputation for reliability - but not unfortunately, good reliability. There is a big difference between defying gravity and a useful aircraft! I like the speil about landing on a road in bad weather and continuing the trip in car mode. Ha, whoever wrote that has never tried to find a road(in a small aircraft) in bad weather, let alone try to land on one! There is another minor consideration - it's actually not legal to land an aircraft on a road, or anywhere else that isn't actually approved for aircraft use. I could think of better uses for US$194K - like 100K for a decent Cessna or Piper single (with a real engine) and 94 K for taxis and/or cheap rentals at country airports.
I was watching one of those Australian Cop shows and the cops had to close the road in both directions for 2-3hr~ to get a Flying Doctors plane to land on the road. The pilot did a flyby and said they had to get rid of all the sign posts and road markers before he would even attempt to land it and that was a clear sunny day. This was in the middle of the desert too!!! They were running low on fuel as well since it took the cops a good hr just to get the road ready for it to land! You would have to be inch perfect to get this car/plane landed then continue on your way. I guess in the states they have really wide roads. Couldn't happen here
That's pretty accurate - I should have said "except in emergency" - once an emergency is declared (and that generates a lot of paperwork!) more options are available to a pilot. That's how the Police and helicopter rescue guys can land anywhere. Requires some coordination with the coppers on the ground though and often a lot of skill on the part of the chopper pilots. It works pretty well and saves a lot of lives-real professionals, we should be grateful.
we use to do autogyrations all the time in Iroquois , just drop out of the sky and land anywhere, was called practise Use to scare the crap out of me , especially when we'd do it in the mountains
