DailyDirt: Flying With The Greatest Of Ease

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Mon, Jun 18th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The Segway was originally billed as a revolutionary new way to travel, but after it was revealed, it didn't seem anywhere near as cool as a flying car (or hoverboard). While everyone is more concerned about gas mileage nowadays, there are still some dreamers out there working on personal flying vehicles. Here are just a few examples of some ways to get yourself off the ground.

Personal planes that can take off and land in water are almost ready to ship to their first 35 customers. Prototypes of these electric planes have been flown in successful test runs, and FlyNano expects to start production in the next year. [url]
A personal helicopter is becoming a bit cheaper and more practical -- just imagine 4 or 5 toy quadcopters linked together with a chair in the middle. The volocopter VC1 is the first all-electric manned helicopter, and all those redundant rotors allow for a few to fail without causing too much trouble. [url]
Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) tells everyone how to build their own hovercraft using a leaf blower, some duct tape and a 4 foot diameter circle of plywood. Warning: make sure you have enough gas in the leaf blower so you don't sink in the middle of a lake.... [url]

If you have some more free time, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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Filed Under: adam savage, flying car, hoverboard, hovercraft, mythbusters, personal mobility, transportation
Companies: flynano

11 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 18 Jun 2012 @ 5:40pm

personal helicopter traffic -- ugh!
as always the real problem with flying cars is the air traffic. drivers can barely handle 2D traffic, 3D traffic would be horrible.
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- Anonymous Coward, 18 Jun 2012 @ 10:22pm
  
  Re: personal helicopter traffic -- ugh!
  all traffic is 3d traffic, unless we're talking about some kind of device to exclude the third dimension.
  
  In any case, its 2012, where the fuck is my flying car already. the least we could get is a hoverboard.
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Joe, 18 Jun 2012 @ 9:52pm

Icon A5
As personal aircraft go, it doesn't get sexier than the Icon A5.

www.iconaircraft.com

fold back wings, dual water/ land takeoff and landing and a price point of about 140k which while not cheap in the real world - in the world of aircraft, it's hella cheap.
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- Michael Ho (profile), 19 Jun 2012 @ 12:20am
  
  Re: Icon A5
  Yup, we covered the Icon A5 a while ago:
  http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100330/1550518796/dailydirt-cool-new-planes.shtml
  
  It's a bit amazing that so many kinds of personal aircraft designs exist...
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drew (profile), 18 Jun 2012 @ 11:56pm

Flynano
Looks like it's technically a wing-in-ground effect vehicle rather than a plane, but it's still very cool.
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maclypse (profile), 19 Jun 2012 @ 1:03am

Nano Website says "Patent Pending".

What part(s) do you think they are patenting? The weird wing does display an uncanny resemblance to the McGinnis wing.

http://www.synergyaircraft.com/
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Hephaestus (profile), 19 Jun 2012 @ 2:15am

Recommended design upgrade for the E-Volo copter
Looking at the images of the design quad + copter they are planning. They should put leading and trailing edges on the support frame. ie shape them like a wing to add lift while in forward motion.
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Wolfger, 19 Jun 2012 @ 2:55am

Need a solution?
Quit being lazy and ride a bike. It never runs out of fuel, never pollutes, and is good for you, too.
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Dementia (profile), 19 Jun 2012 @ 8:59am

If you haven't heard about it already, you might want to take a look at the hoverbike. http://www.hover-bike.com/index.html
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- Michael Ho (profile), 19 Jun 2012 @ 12:48pm
  
  Re:
  We also covered the hoverbike...
  http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110518/18051114329/dailydirt-odd-vehicles.shtml
  
  The hoverbike looks cool, but somehow also more dangerous than the volocopter VC1. The hoverbike doesn't look like it's meant to really fly too far off the ground, but it still lacks a bit of rotor redundancy.
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Richard, 20 Jun 2012 @ 8:58pm

Building one's own "air car"
In the October 1974 issue of Boys' Life magazine, on page 70, there was a mail order ad whereby a reader could obtain for US$3.00 plans for an "air car." Among other things, the air car could lift "up to 200 pounds." (Or, for those using the metric system, approximately 90.71 kg.) In a 1998 issue of Zillions magazine (which was like Consumer Reports but with kids testing toys and similar items), a review was done wherein Zillions mail ordered plans for an "air car" and had a 9-year-old kid build the project with his father to see how well it actually worked.
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