Through my K1ckstarter for Kickstarter app on Google Play I ran into project Volare.
The goal of Volare is to build an autonomous plane to be able to complete 200 mile(100miles each way) round-trip journey. We plan to build it big and strong enough to be able to carry a 5lb package and be able to drop it at the destination on its round-trip journey.
I backed the project and hope others will follow!
Comments
Just stay under 400 feet.
The FAA "rules" about LOS say "Expected" to maintain LOS.
Expected is much much different than "Shall" or "Will". I am sure the FAA has hoards of lawyers who vet every publication, and there is a reason they wrote Expect, instead of Shall. I believe it's because they knew that while aircraft that fly "as a model" are expected to be continuously remote controlled by a user on the ground (at the time of the writing), it might happen that you can not maintain LOS. I'm not any lawyer, but I interpret this to mean, stay under 400 feet, stay over 5 miles from any type of airfield or landing spot, don't hit anything and don't crash and you should be good. Many people will disagree with me.
They cant afford $600?
200 miles + 5lbs + autonomous? Any single one of those is hard enough on a $600 budget. The kickstarter should be updated with a proposed bill of materials so viewers can lend constructive criticism and the proposal can be modified to be more realistic.
Here's the build log http://scapeoflegends.com/pictures.php. It appears there actually building a scale model of a cargo transport jet....um yeah. Well at least they aren't asking for 180,000
This is a joke...
Plenty of challenges, but "we plan to rigorously test," so, ok then. Problem solved.
$600 goal? No details at all on how they plan to accomplish this? I love Kickstarter, but don't understand why they approved this one. Among other things, it violates the Kickstarter rule about "no renders". Also, why is the picture of a commercial transport?