Oddball, Experimental, or One-off

[skippydiesel]

Payload  in kilograms - please. 

 

[spacesailor]

About 181.1/2 Kilo

spacesailor

Edited February 18 by spacesailor

[facthunter]

If it crashes on you it will be assault with battery. Nev

[kgwilson]

Its a pushmepullyou.

[red750]

Performance & Capacity

Cruise Speed                 60 - 70 knots / 111 - 130 km/h / 30 - 36 m/s

Stall with flaps               35 knots / 65 km/h / 18 m/s

Landing Speed               45 knots / 83 km/h / 23 m/s

Climb Rate                      1,200 ft per minute / 365 m per minute

Maximum Payload          400 lbs / 181 kg

Cargo Volume                 70 ft3 / 1.98 m3

[onetrack]

The manufacturer is claiming they will only be leased, not available for purchase, and they will only cost $15 hr to operate?

 

I wonder who was smoking what, when they came up with that figure??

 

Of course, I guess they were only costing battery energy costs, they conveniently forgot to mention the $500 hr in development, repair, maintenance, computerisation, testing, and hull losses costs.

 

See inside a new pilotless cargo plane, which has a nose-loading door like the Boeing 747 and can fly up to 200 miles

WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM

---

So far, the company has secured over 80 orders for Pelican Cargo, and it expects the first commercial flight to take place in the second half of 2023.

 

[BrendAn]

4 hours ago, red750 said:

Oakland, CA, January 30, 2023— Pyka, the global leader in autonomous electric aviation technology, today unveiled the latest addition to its fleet of purpose-built industrial aircraft; the Pelican Cargo. Featuring unprecedented payload and range capabilities, Pelican Cargo is the world’s largest zero-emission cargo airplane and the first autonomous vehicle of its class. 

 

With a range of up to 200 miles, a payload of up to 400 pounds in 66 cubic feet of cargo volume and a nose-loading system with a sliding cargo tray, the Pelican Cargo platform will enhance express logistics networks, enable connectivity of remote rural communities, and ensure fast and reliable access to vital goods and supplies for areas in need. 

 

Don't piloted aircraft already supply remote communities with higher speed and much higher payloads.

[kgwilson]

Yep but if you don't have a pilot there are no wages to pay, or insurance premiums, or worksafe fees etc.

[T510]

You still need a pilot in Australia, they just won't be sitting in the plane.

 

The pilot will also need IREX to do BVLOS flights with that sort of aircraft and getting the approvals to fly it will be challenging.

[skippydiesel]

Performance & Capacity

Cruise Speed                 60 - 70 knots / 111 - 130 km/h / 30 - 36 m/s

Stall with flaps               35 knots / 65 km/h / 18 m/s

Landing Speed               45 knots / 83 km/h / 23 m/s

Climb Rate                      1,200 ft per minute / 365 m per minute

 

With no technical knowledge: Those figures just don't look quite right.

 

If it stalls at 35 knots  - it won't land at 45 knots.

Cruise at 70 knots - I would expect a wing giving this sort of performance, to stall a lot lower than 35 knots

Climb rate - doesn't look like MTO

 

 

[red750]

That info as copied direct from the manufacturer's website.

 

https://www.flypyka.com/pelican-cargo

 

[F10]

On 15/12/2022 at 5:52 PM, red750 said:

 

 

 

For full details of this aircraft, click here.

Never listen to a marriage councilor, when buying an aircraft....!

[Area-51]

On 19/02/2024 at 4:04 PM, F10 said:

Never listen to a marriage councilor, when buying an aircraft....!

I never knew they made a twin turbine blanik!!  😳

[LoonyBob]

On 26/02/2024 at 1:48 PM, Area-51 said:

I never knew they made a twin turbine blanik!!  😳

Fouga would give you a good kicking for that!

[red750]

The Stearman XA-21 (Model X-100) was a competitor in a United States Army Air Corps competition for a twin-engined attack aircraft which (after redesigns) led to the Douglas A-20 Havoc, Martin A-22 Maryland and North American B-25 Mitchell.

 

The X-100, designated XA-21 following purchase by the Army Air Corps, was a twin-engined high-winged monoplane of all-metal construction. Its initial design featured an unusual "stepless cockpit" arrangement, much like those on most German World War II bombers designed during the war years from the He 111P onwards, with a streamlined, well-framed greenhouse canopy enclosing both the pilot and bombardier stations.

 

The XA-21 was first tested with the streamlined cockpit but this configuration was found to restrict the pilot's forward vision, and the aircraft was rebuilt with a conventional (stepped) nose and cockpit structure. Although this change in the cockpit did not significantly affect performance, the XA-21 was not ordered into production.'

 

The sole XA-21 had serial number 40-191.

 

[red750]

The Blackburn B-20, an experimental aircraft that took to the skies in 1940, was designed to significantly enhance the efficiency of flying boat models. Blackburn Aircraft initiated a self-directed design exploration, grounded in a patent submitted by their lead designer, John Douglas Rennie, which featured a retractable pontoon float that doubled as the planing hull. 

The B-20 aimed to merge the prime attributes of the flying boat and the floatplane. When on water, it functioned primarily as a floatplane, supported by a substantial float beneath the fuselage for buoyancy, complemented by two smaller floats near the wingtips ensuring stability. Once airborne, the central float retracted upward into the fuselage, snugly fitting into a "notch" to streamline seamlessly with the fuselage, while the wingtip floats, akin to the design on the American Consolidated PBY flying boat, extended outward to form the wingtips. This innovative design provided optimal wing incidence for both takeoff and flight, significantly reducing the drag typically associated with the deep hulls of traditional flying boats. Only 1 built.

 

Hull extended

 

 

Hull retracted

 

[red750]

The Pander S-4 Postjager was a 1930s Dutch three-engined mailplane designed and built by Pander & Son. Only one was built which was destroyed during the MacRobertson Air Race.

 

The S-4 was designed as a fast mailplane for the service between the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. It was a three-seat low-wing monoplane powered by three 420 hp (313 kW) Wright Whirlwind radial engines. It had a conventional retractable landing gear with a tailwheel. The S-4, registered PH-OST, first flew on 6 October 1933.

 

In December 1933 it flew a mail flight to Batavia. In 1934 the S-4 was entered into the MacRobertson Air Race between London and Melbourne. It left Mildenhall in England on 20 October 1934 and after 36 hours arrived at Allahabad, India. The aircraft was delayed when the landing gear was badly damaged on arrival at Allahabad. It was ready to leave on 26 October but while taxiing for departure it hit a motor car and burst into flames and was destroyed; the crew jumped out and escaped injury.

 

[red750]

The Andiel Typhoon TD1 is a homebuilt, two place low wing recreation aircraft designed and built in Australia by Willy Andiel. 

It first flew in April 2003 powered by a 100hp VW RG TT 2000 engine and features an all-flying tailplane. The vision was to make plans available to kit builders, however this did not eventuate and it was withdrawn from use in 2011.

This one-off aircraft was donated to HARS Parkes and recovered from Cowra. The engineering team has been working to restore it to display condition.

 

 

[red750]

The Couzinet 10 Arc-en-Ciel ('Rainbow') was built as a first example of the three-engined, aerodynamically refined, cantilever low wing monoplane designer René Couzinet thought offered the safest long range passenger transport, for example on the South Atlantic route. Only one was completed, though other, similar aircraft of different sizes and powers followed.

 

The Couzinet 10 was the first of his designs to be built, though it was the result of his design study number 27. It led to the smaller Couzinet 20 and 30 series and the larger Couzinet 40 and 70.

 

The one-piece wing of the Couzinet 10 was 900 mm (35.4 in) thick at the root, a thickness to chord ratio of 18%, and thinned continuously out to the tip. In plan each wing was trapezoidal, though long tips produced an approximately elliptical form. Long, narrow-chord ailerons filled most of the straight part of the trailing edges. It was entirely wooden, built around two box spars and plywood covered.

 

The Arc-en-Ciel was powered by three 170 kW (230 hp) Hispano-Suiza 8Ac water-cooled upright V8 engines. One was in the nose and the other two ahead of the wing leading edge, all within cowlings that followed the V8's cylinder heads and cooled with Lamblin radiators. Seven wing fuel tanks held a total of 6,200 L (1,400 imp gal; 1,600 US gal).[3] The thickness of the wing at its root allowed crew to reach the engines in flight via a corridor 700 mm (27.6 in) high.

 

[red750]

The Fokker F.XX was a 1930s Dutch three-engined airliner designed and built by Fokker. It was the first Fokker design to use an elliptical-section fuselage instead of the traditional square fuselage and the first Fokker aircraft with retractable landing gear.

 

The F.XX was a high-wing thick-section cantilever monoplane with a retractable tailwheel landing gear. It was powered by three Wright Cyclone radial engines, one in the nose and one under each wing on struts. The main landing gear retracted into the engine nacelles. The F.XX registered PH-AIZ and named Zilvermeeuw (en: Silver Gull) first flew in 1933. It was delivered to KLM for services from Amsterdam to London and Berlin. Although the F.XX was a more advanced design both in aerodynamics and looks than earlier Fokkers, the arrival of the twin-engined low-wing Douglas DC-2 and DC-3 soon rendered it obsolete. Only one aircraft was built, and after service with KLM was sold to French airline Air Tropique; the plane got a camouflage paint scheme and was registered F-APEZ. Air Tropique had ties with the Spanish Republican government, that used the plane to operate a liaison service between Madrid and Paris. In 1937 it went to LAPE in Spain, and was registered EC-45-E. The plane crashed in Spain February 15, 1938 near Barcelona at Prat de Llobregat Airport.

 

Licence production in the UK as the Airspeed AS.21 was not proceeded with.

 

[red750]

The SNCASO SO.8000 Narval (English: Narwhal) was a French carrier-based strike fighter designed by Sud-Ouest in the late 1940s. The French Navy (Marine nationale) ordered two prototypes in 1946 and they made their maiden flights three years later. They were plagued by aerodynamic problems and unreliability issues with their piston engines. The aircraft proved to be slow, lacking in lateral and longitudinal stability and unsuitable for carrier operations; it did not enter production.

 

The French Navy ordered two prototype SO.8000 strike fighters on 31 May 1946 to equip its aircraft carriers. If the prototypes were successful, it planned to order five pre-production models and sixty-five production aircraft. Designer Jean Dupuy developed a twin-boom pusher configuration design with a crescent wing and tricycle landing gear. The horizontal stabilizer was connected at the tops of the vertical stabilizers at the ends of the booms to avoid turbulence from the contra-rotating propeller. The pilot was provided with an ejection seat and the aircraft was intended to be fitted with six 20-millimeter (0.8 in) MG 151 autocannon in the nose and to be able to carry 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb) of ordnance under the wings. In the end, only the two prototypes were built.

 

 

[Marty_d]

If they put a jet engine in it and called it a Vampire, it would have worked a lot better...

[red750]

The Douglas Cloudster II was an American prototype five-seat light aircraft of the late 1940s. It was of unusual layout, with two buried piston engines driving a single pusher propeller. Only a single example was built, which flew only twice, as it proved too expensive to be commercially viable.

 

During the early 1940s, Douglas Aircraft Company developed a configuration for high-performance twin-engined aircraft, in which the engines were buried in the fuselage, driving propellers mounted behind a conventional tailplane, in order to reduce drag by eliminating drag inducing objects such as engines from the wing. This layout was first demonstrated in the Douglas XB-42 Mixmaster bomber, which first flew in 1944, showing a 30% reduction in drag compared with a conventional twin-engined layout, while eliminating handling problems due to asymmetric thrust when flying on one engine.

 

The Cloudster II was a low-winged monoplane with a retractable nosewheel undercarriage. The pilot and four passengers sat in an enclosed cabin well ahead of the unswept, laminar flow wing. Two air-cooled piston engines were buried in the rear fuselage, driving a single eight foot diameter twin-bladed propeller, mounted behind the empennage via driveshafts taken from P-39 fighters. Two air intakes forward of the wing directed cooling air to the engines, which then exhausted beneath the fuselage.

 

 

[red750]

The Lockheed Model 34 Big Dipper was an American two-seat monoplane, designed and built by Lockheed at Burbank for research into the company's potential entry into the civil lightplane and military light utility aircraft market. Only one was built, and following its loss in an accident the program was abandoned. The single engine Big Dipper looks remarkably like the two-engined five seat Douglas Cloudster above. 

 

Developed by John Thorp and based on his work on Lockheed's Little Dipper lightplane project, the Lockheed Model 34, named "Big Dipper", was intended as a prototype for a lightplane to sell on the postwar market - Lockheed hoping to sell the aircraft at a price of $1500 - and as a potential 'flying jeep' for the United States Army. It was a low-wing cantilever monoplane with a fixed tricycle landing gear and a conventional empennage; the cabin was enclosed, seating two in side-by-side positions. Unusually the Continental C100 piston engine was fitted in the center fuselage behind the cabin, driving a two-bladed pusher propeller mounted at the rear of the aircraft.

 

Big Dipper.

 

 

Little Dipper

 

[red750]

The Junkers Ju 390 was a German long-range derivative of the Junkers Ju 290 aircraft, intended to be used as a heavy transport aircraft, maritime patrol aircraft and long-range bomber. It was one of the aircraft designs submitted for the abortive Amerikabomber project, along with the Messerschmitt Me 264, the Focke-Wulf Ta 400 and the Heinkel He 277.

 

Two prototypes were created by attaching an extra pair of inner-wing segments onto the wings of Ju 290 airframes and adding new sections to lengthen the fuselages. Only prototype 1 flew.