In article ,
says...


Little Endian wrote:

Quite interesting.. this sort of machine can bridge the gap between GA
and the practicality of using small airplanes for commuting.

"Either way, it boils down to this: You sit down behind the steering
wheel, drive to the runway, unfold two wings and take off. You can fly
500 miles on a tank of gas -- regular unleaded -- and when you land,
you simply fold up the wings and drive where you want to go. At the
end of the day, you fly back, drive home and park inside your garage."

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/0...lying-car.html


"A Boston-area company plans to begin flight tests this year of a two-seater
airplane that moonlights as a car."

Has the timetable slipped? Wasn't the proof-of-concept vehicle supposed to
fly in 2008?




It's slipped more than that! POC was set for 1947, and again in 1958, then in
1965,71,78,85,91 etc etc. . .

I figure at any given moment there must be a half dozen car-planes in various
prototype stages around the world, each seeming to claim they have invented
something no one ever thought of before. When a slow news day comes along,
journalists have a shortcut key "CTRL-SHFT-CP" or something and out pops a
fully developed story about the new invention.

In reality, as the years go by this "invention" becomes less and less viable,
because of increasing regulatory environment and liability concerns. Now we've
added fuel prices and "green" politics to all that! It "almost" could have been
possible for a limited production run for some of the post-war versions, when
you could pretty much do what you wanted if you could afford it, but today it
is completely impossible. Hard to imagine how or why any developer would waste
time and resources on an inherently non-viable concept.