Cool that arfcom has an aviation forum; thought I'd speak up. I'm a retired Army helicopter guy and was out of the aviation industry for two years. I just started working for Zapata a few months ago, trying to find my way through this crazy mixed up world. Far from perfect, but elemental personal VTOL is a thing now. I think I'll get a chance to fly it next month.

We've got some US demonstrations coming up in LA, Havasu, and Naples (hopefully) in the next two months. Fly safely.

Wow.   I don't even know what to say.    

Good luck, I hope it really takes off.

It's a shame it can't take off from say a parking lot...

Amazing...

Looks like same problem as a jet pack - limited run time.  I assume it's more than the 1-2 minutes of a jet pack though?  What sort of fuel burn rate?  

Also did I read that right 4 turbines for lift?  That's stupid expensive and has all sorts of reliability implications, I can't imagine this will ever be a consumer priced item.  

I have an infatuation with one person flying machines.  I assume you've researched the wasp the army looked into?

Yes, there are some critical limitations so far. If you can't stand up, it won't work, which is a huge disadvantage in a tactical situation. We have a couple of seated variants underway. A version with a handlebar and fuselage-mounted fuel cell has already flown.

Taking off from a parking lot: We can take off from anywhere. We've done parking lots, beaches, boats in rolling seas, piers.  What you see is an aluminum stand that keeps it far enough off whatever you're on to prevent thermal damage to the surface and limit the amount of dust & debris that gets kicked up and possibly ingested.  

Consumer item: Correct, not likely. The current config is 5 engines that puts it squarely in the "inexpensive house" pricing area. It's a bargain if you need VTOL but can't afford a helicopter or its upkeep. The most likely markets are gov and specialized industry (ie harbor pilot transport, ship-to-ship, ship-to-rig, etc)

The most significant limitation is endurance. It takes a lot of fuel to sustain that kind of thrust so we're currently in the 8-10 minute range with the amount of fuel we carry. In the US we fly IAW 14CFR103 which limits us to under 5 gal of fuel, so we see about 6 minutes of flight time. The seated and cowled variants we're working on can carry more fuel, which of course impinges on available cargo capacity. Everything is a trade.

Accidents: Through the course of development we've had some incidents. No injuries, thankfully. The board is set up to be flyable with one engine out and controllable in a descent with two engines out. We've done in-flight fault injection testing. We've come a long way with redundancy and are no longer limiting flights to over-water.

ETA: I've been spending too much time in GD...I expected the full hate-train treatment. Nice to be around civilized folk.

We've all wanted something like that, since we were kids.  

Seems like the safest profile, would be to attain minimum parachute altitude as soon as possible?      What would that be?  


Too bad it doesn't have a pole in the middle which can mortar up a parachute if needed.   Plus, you could hold onto it

The boots look like ski boot style, i.e. Your feet are restrained and your ankle motion is restricted or eliminated?  Seems like that would make landing and taking off unassisted difficult?

If the goal is a marketable niche item, what decisions led down this complex path(multiple turbines and electronic stabilization) as opposed to a less complex device?  

There are countless single person flying machines, I'm very interested to know how you ended up with what you have.  I'm a simpleton of sorts - seems like you could have a much larger potential market if you had a simpler/cheaper device?

How does it behave if you lose an engine?

Based on the testing being over water, I can guess, but just thought I'd ask

Wile E. Coyote

Are you guys hiring?