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Video Purports To Show Successful Hover Bike Test Flights
Zothecula writes "Videos released by California-based tech research company Aerofex appear to show successful test flights of a prototype hover bike that gains lift from two large ducted rotors. Aeroflex claims its hover bike allows the pilot intuitive control over pitch, roll and yaw without need of artificial intelligence, flight software or electronics of any kind."
Is it allowed through the drive-thru?
When I saw the term "hover bike", I thought they were talking about something human powered.
Still, I wouldn't mind getting to ride on it...
#DeleteChrome
My impression is that the driver is under high stress and may have trouble to control this thing. May not be nearly as stable as the video tries to imply.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And somehow, for some reason of time rather garbled and strange, this seems so boring in comparison to this wonderful antique: Williams WASP X-Jet
I'm not saying I don't want one, but if given the choice....
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
A small hovercraft without a skirt!
Yawn. Ground effect only. That's not flying.
And, so what? It's called a hover bike not a 'flying' bike.
A flying bike would require ridiculous thrust if it were made out of something more substantial than balsa wood. I doubt you'd want to ride something like that without an enclosed cockpit.
The article claims they flew it at 15 ft, and that they think they can way higher like 10,000 ft: if true that's definitely not just ground effect, but unfortunately video doesn't even show the 15 ft trials, only hovering really close to the ground. I would expect them to show off their top tests too.
The think I'm mostly wondering about is stability. How do they do that? Hovercrafts are notorious for their instability, especially smaller craft. Flying them is a tough balancing act.
At least the videos look genuine to me, so it seems to be a real product. Oh well, time will tell how true it all is.
If it turned out to be only ground effect I'd still want one, looks fun!
The terrain looks suspiciously like the surface of Mars. Don't be a sucker. This could not work in Earth gravity.
All the articles I've seen they boast of this mechanical system for balancing the craft. The guy looks terrified to move even slightly. This type of VTOL craft is inherently unstable. There's a good reason he never guns it, the craft would flip. I'm sure it's perfectly capable of reaching a 100 to 200 feet or more but not safely. The LEM for the Moon landing was very similar but there was more finger crossing than technology involved in the first Moon landing. It's a cool idea but any moderately safe system would have to involve computers for balance correction rather then a mechanical linked system. They can become unstable in less than a second. Hearing it was mechanical in nature made me call bullshit before I even saw the video. After seeing it I'm still convinced that there's no passive way to make them safe. Even the Moeller Skycar with all it's computer assistance never got more than 15 feet off the ground. The Harrier jet was one of the few successful VTOL crafts that ever was ever widely accepted.
In the 50s, the military paid for development of similar technology, but the power:weight ratio and range just wasn't there with 50s engine technology.
TFA mentions that they're staying under 15ft for safety reasons, not because it requires the ground effect to operate.
The idea for this basic design was thought up in the 40s and the only reason it was abandoned in the 50s/60s was because the military decided to put their money behind conventional helicopters.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
They sure went to a lot of trouble for a fake product.
Registering their website in 1997, going to conferences in 2012.
That's the kind of trolling that takes planning and dedication
Future Vertical Lift Aircraft Design Conference 2012 (PDF)
3:30 PM - 4:00 PM Thrust Augmentation & Control of Ducted-Fan VTOL Air-Vehicles -- Mark De Roche, Aerofex Corporation
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This looks suspiciously like the Black Rock desert in Nevada. About a hundred miles North and a little East of Reno, near the town of Gerlach.
The place is the largest section of "flat" in the US. It's the remains of a prehistoric lake (Lahontan) that has dried up, leaving behind a perfectly flat dried mud surface.
It's where the land-speed records are set. It's where amateur rockets are launched. It's where Burning Man is held.
Wow, what an incredibly dumb comment. Look at the article title: "Hover Bike". Go look up the definition of "hover", as in "hovercraft". They don't need to fly above ground effect, that's the whole point of a hovercraft, is to stay close to the ground but hover enough that you can fly over rough (roadless) terrain and water.
Steering? I know from one-man hovercraft that the rudder is mostly useless, and you steer by leaning. You need a Cog to be high enough to do this.
A quadrocopter can fly without a man on top, be telecommand. In this case it will be light and safe to fly in a city.
The problem is the battery. What is needed is the miniature silent gas turbine, so that it can fly not 10 minutes, but 2 hours.
The problem with all these powered lift gizmos (like the Williams X-jet and the Hiller VZ-1) is that you tend to fall out ouf the sky when your engine fails... The Hiller VZ-1 which is also a ducted fan used *two* 30 kW engines, but barely flew out of the ground effect and was limited in speed. More powerful versions had other control problems.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
"but the power:weight ratio and range just wasn't there with 50s engine technology"
Yep, modern batteries should give the required energy storage capacity while electric motors give much better power/torque at very very low weight. Plus the lightweight materials to build the chassis which just didn't exist before the space race and have only improved since then.
In the 50s I imagine the batteries meant an electric motor was just impossible without tethering you to the mains, so it required a internal combustion engine which naturally means very heavy motor and very heavy fuel.
If there is a bit of wind: Free haircuts for pedestrians!
Get yourself an ordinary hovercraft, it'll be cheaper, easier, work much better and it's available now.
(Or maybe you enjoy the risk of a device with whirling blades underneath the pilot that will chop him into tiny pieces at the slightest mistake)
No sig today...
You seem to have forgotten about helicopters. What the hell do you think they are??
Unlike most hovercraft this looks like it has decent control.
Huh? I watched the video twice and didn't see any impressive braking or steering. Or speed.
All I saw was a guy driving like he was constantly worried about falling into the whirling blades six inches under his feet.
No sig today...
I'm just glad the video had no sound. I don't think my eardrums could have taken it.
No sig today...
The think I'm mostly wondering about is stability. How do they do that? Hovercrafts are notorious for their instability, especially smaller craft. Flying them is a tough balancing act.
My impression is that it doesn't have good stability. Stability refers to the tendency of an aircraft to correct deviations in its flight path. An aircraft has inherent stability in three axes- pitch, yaw, and roll. Pitch refers to the nose pitching up and down, yaw refers to the nose yawing left and right, and roll is rolling about the long axis. So if a gust of wind rolls one wing up, the plane will automatically compensate and level out-without any action on the part of the pilot. This machine seems to perhaps have decent pitch and yaw stability, but roll stability seems to be pretty minimal. You can watch the machine slowly rolling in the movie; it's presumably the result of having a high center of gravity, like a man standing in a canoe.
As far as I can tell, the machine isn't actually stable, instead the pilot continually makes small adjustments to keep the machine flying level. According to the article, "Aerofex's new proof-of-concept craft keeps itself stable by responding to a human rider's natural sense of balance" and "The company has apparently rectified the issue with the addition of knee-level "control bars" on either side of the vehicle that make the vehicle more responsive to the pilot's movements." So from the video and the article it would seem that they haven't made the machine stable, they've made it controllable, and given the pilot the ability to continually make small adjustments to keep it level. If he gets distracted, of course...
Just think how much more efficient it would be with a skirt. Could probably get high enough off the ground to go somewhere other than the desert too.