It's a car! It's a plane!, It's REALLY ugly!
03-19-09, 08:10 AM
#1
Out of Warranty
Thread Starter
It's a car! It's a plane!, It's REALLY ugly!
Sporting a sticker price in the supercar range and a face only a mother could love, Terrafugia's "Transition" has completed its first flight. The first "real" fixed-wing flying car took off from Plattsburgh International earlier this month, and yesterday the manufacturer held a press conference to announce the private event.
Photos courtesy Boston Herald
Videos (on their website) show the ugly little mutt actually taking off, flying for a quarter mile or so, and landing gently. Critics may say that it never got out of ground effect, but first flights are not punctuated by snap rolls or Cuban 8's. Not intentionally, anyway. It's a beginning. Takeoff and landing were very smooth, and rotation was easily controllable. At least one advantage of the design means that after touchdown you're a car, a front wheel drive coupe, with car-like handling and brakes.
The test pilot remarked at the smoothness and stability of the "aircraft", and its predictable handling. With that first flight behind them, the good folks at Terrafugia (Italian for "escape from land") enter a new phase of development, that of sorting the flight envelope.
Overall, a good start for a two-place light sport aircraft you can land on any airfield, power fold the wings and horizontal stabilizer in a few seconds, and drive home to stow in your standard garage bay. Despite its odd looks, by "flying car" standards, it is a thing of beauty - which should give you an idea of the supreme ugliness of its predecessors. Maybe the designers could just clean up the nose and cabin that are uninspired, even by light sport aircraft standards and usually penned by engineers, not artists. At this stage of development it resembles a chipmunk eating a cracker, but who am I to say?
Base Price: $194,000 - expensive for a car, almost reasonable for a light aircraft. Coming to a garage near you soon.
Links to website and videos here:
http://www.terrafugia.com/index.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509656,00.html
http://www.bostonherald.com/business...ess&position=0
Photos courtesy Boston Herald
Videos (on their website) show the ugly little mutt actually taking off, flying for a quarter mile or so, and landing gently. Critics may say that it never got out of ground effect, but first flights are not punctuated by snap rolls or Cuban 8's. Not intentionally, anyway. It's a beginning. Takeoff and landing were very smooth, and rotation was easily controllable. At least one advantage of the design means that after touchdown you're a car, a front wheel drive coupe, with car-like handling and brakes.
The test pilot remarked at the smoothness and stability of the "aircraft", and its predictable handling. With that first flight behind them, the good folks at Terrafugia (Italian for "escape from land") enter a new phase of development, that of sorting the flight envelope.
Overall, a good start for a two-place light sport aircraft you can land on any airfield, power fold the wings and horizontal stabilizer in a few seconds, and drive home to stow in your standard garage bay. Despite its odd looks, by "flying car" standards, it is a thing of beauty - which should give you an idea of the supreme ugliness of its predecessors. Maybe the designers could just clean up the nose and cabin that are uninspired, even by light sport aircraft standards and usually penned by engineers, not artists. At this stage of development it resembles a chipmunk eating a cracker, but who am I to say?
Base Price: $194,000 - expensive for a car, almost reasonable for a light aircraft. Coming to a garage near you soon.
Links to website and videos here:
http://www.terrafugia.com/index.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509656,00.html
http://www.bostonherald.com/business...ess&position=0
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