Flying Car Makes Successful Maiden Flight

MistrX writes "The Dutch company PAL-V completed its first series of test flights with its flying car, the PAL-V One, successfully. The PAL-V One flies like a gyrocopter, with a minimal runway length of 165 meters, and drives around like a trike on the road. Furthermore it offers 2 passengers a maximum speed of 180km/h both on land and in the air. The company aims with the PAL-V One at usage within the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Germany and France, because private flying is more commonplace."

Comments

Gyrocopter

[vlm]

From the fine website, I cut and paste this WTF moment "A PAL-V ONE flies exactly like a gyrocopter, which is the easiest and safest way of flying."

To be polite, I will just say that opinion is not shared by the majority of aeronautical engineers who are not being paid to say it who know about "old style" autogyros. I'm just mister groundschool with a lot of simulator time and only a couple hours PIC and even I LOLed at that quote. I think they hired that "Baghdad Bob" the former Iraqi information minister for that line.

Autogyros are cool until the rotor stalls and you die, or the rotor seemingly inevitably cuts your head off in a crash landing, or ground resonance sets in and there's nothing you can do about it but die, PIO due to PPO (and possibly PPO is due to PIO?) and you die... There have been some improvements in design which may or may not prevent those control-theory problems, but the "giant rotating wing" cannot be replaced while still calling it a autogyro. Its like saying you could make a motorcycle safe to ride by merely completely enclosing it with windshields and doors, adding conventional seats with seatbelts and airbags, and adding a couple more wheels for enhanced stability, and ta da, a safe "motorcycle", although it not appears to be a Fiat Punto (which is actually a pretty nice small car, I've driven one a couple hundred miles in IRL).

The main problem with a "car autogyro" is likely to be chopping up pedestrians and bikers. Which is traditionally seen as "OK" when done by drivers, so maybe its not going to be so bad after all.

Gyrocycle way ahead

[TheSync]

The Molnari Gryocycle street-legal gyrocopter motorcycle is way ahead!