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Kitty Hawk demos its production-ready solo sport Flyer

Kitty Hawk demos its production-ready solo sport Flyer

With pontoon-shaped landing skids, the Flyer is clearly designed to be flown over water
With pontoon-shaped landing skids, the Flyer is clearly designed to be flown over water (Credit: Kitty Hawk).

Larry Page’s Kitty Hawk startup has been beavering away on several different personal flight projects, including a self-piloting, electric VTOL air taxi that can be used for Uber Elevate-style aerial commuting. The Silicon Valley company has also been working on something sportier – a single-seat multicopter fun machine called the Flyer. And today, the team released images and partial specs on what looks to be the final production design.

  • Kitty Hawk Flyer is currently limited to an altitude of 10 feet
  • The design looks production-ready, and Kitty Hawk seems to have several already built
  • Solo multicopter flying fun is on the menu with the Kitty Hawk Flyer
  • 10 props on a hash-shaped airframe

It looks kind of like the pilot is sitting in a high-end basketball shoe in the sky, with two pontoon floats either side. The suggestion is clear: please fly this thing over water, where at least if you crash you’ve got a chance.

The Flyer runs 10 electric fans with no prop guards, each one looking roughly three feet (1 m) long, arranged across a hash-shaped airframe measuring 8 x 13 ft (2.4 x 3.9 m).

Flight time is somewhere around 12 to 20 minutes, depending on pilot weight and the speed you’re flying at. In terms of safety, Kitty Hawk has currently decided to limit altitude to between 3 to 10 ft (0.9 to 3 m), and maximum speed to 20 mph (32 km/h).

The company says you can learn to fly it in “less than an hour,” and fly it without a pilot’s license as an ultralight aircraft, meaning you’ll need to keep it away from populated areas.

(For the balance of this article visit: https://newatlas.com/kitty-hawk-flyer-video/54947/)