• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.

    Post 16 Update

    Post 17 Warning

Anyone here live near Melbourne Florida, USA?

I'm basically in the down wind pattern for 9R or 9L

Sieggie
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">
 
Hey Sieggie,


Have you by chance seen this plane there? Can you see if the owners of it are on the airport grounds or perhaps get a phone number from them?

The plane is called an Atlantica, the company that made it is Wingco.com and the person that designed it is Allen Shaw, but nothing can be found on him for contact. No phone numbers work, no email addresses work. But this photo seems to be recent, so I am wondeirng if the plane is still being worked on by someone there local.

This is a newer version of the plane with gear bays in the belly. The yellow prototype was a fixed gear plane. This could also be the prototype buck though that first came out of the molds and perhaps had gear bays back then before Yellow came along.
 
I have not seen it but will sniff around and see if I can find out anything about it.

Dave
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">
 
Went over to the airport, found the gate number N378V in the background of the image but that number is on a gate with big fuel tanks now so I think the picture is older than you think.

I talked to the mechanic from the FBO right next to the gate and he thinks he remembers seeing the plane a while back but does not know who owns it. He said he thinks it is a Velocity but I don't see the required canard in the picture for a Rutan designed aircraft. Maybe the same call for someone near Merritt Island or south to Valkaria airport. Both airports have lots of experimentals because they are uncontrolled fields and the FBO there is a little more liberal then Melbourne with the aircraft.

Dave
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">
 
Dave,

Youre awesome man! Thanks for checking.

Man, I hope the airplane isnt totally gone.

The owner was also making a Velocity and I think he made wings for builders.

Its a very wild design. Pam (Warchild) found this thing at Airliners.net. Its quite similar to the new Boeing Blended Wing design, having a lifting body, no canards, thin wings. It causes uncontrolled drueling issues. Bad on keyboards.

Thanks again for checking on this. Greatly appreciated.


Bill
 
Sieggie said:
. . . . .He said he thinks it is a Velocity but I don't see the required canard in the picture for a Rutan designed aircraft. . . . . .Dave
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">
Click to expand...
Funny cause even before you mentioned that, my first impression was that it looked like a futuristic version of the Velocity. I spent 7 months working on one to get it into flying condition for a client. They are very cool airplanes. . .wish I had gotten a ride in it before he took it to Oshkosh. I did look at the Velocity website and it doesn't appear to be one of their airplanes. . .at least not yet. . .heck they're only about 23miles down the coast from Melbourne. . .maybe they're hiding it there for the time being, lol.
 
SADT said:
Hi,

Anyone know its performance specs - that thing looks seriously fast!
Click to expand...


Unfortunately, it never flew. Well, it did once for high speed taxi, accidently climbed right up in the air, and the pilot stalled it, smacked it down on the tarmac, cracking the wings and caving in the landing gear.


Beauty of a plane, eh? I want to make that one BAD!!!!!
 
I know someone who was looking at investing in that project. It had serious control and stability issues. The last I had heard, they were considering adding twin tail booms and a horizontal tail to fix the problems, but that was around three or four years ago.
 
Sundog said:
I know someone who was looking at investing in that project. It had serious control and stability issues. The last I had heard, they were considering adding twin tail booms and a horizontal tail to fix the problems, but that was around three or four years ago.
Click to expand...


Thats interesting to know. Thanks for the heads up Sundog.

I had heard that someone mentioned it needed canards or something. Too bad they cant just make that design work. The Boeing BWB prototype seems to fly just fine. Some thought their swept wing percentage was just too drastic and would inherit handling issues at low speeds.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top