So are these things exempt from the FAR’s? A friend wanted to land his helicopter at his house on Orcas and the county said no go yet in the video these people are flying these things all over the island, hmmmm. Interesting.

I was born 30 years too late, or 30 years too early. Straddling the divide where being a "pilot" meant something and a world where enough money buys flight privileges without going going through extensive training and certification is disheartening.

I saw one of those or something very similar at an airshow a couple of years ago. The guy selling them claimed they were legal as ultralights, no license or training required, but they would teach you to fly it for free. The price of over $100,000.00 convinced me to not take it seriously.

Dale Moul wrote:I saw one of those or something very similar at an airshow a couple of years ago. The guy selling them claimed they were legal as ultralights, no license or training required, but they would teach you to fly it for free. The price of over $100,000.00 convinced me to not take it seriously.

I love to see aviation innovation, and I like seeing enthusiasm for flying from the younger generation. But think about what the low barrier to entry that DJI quadcopters bring, and what that did to usher in the regulation of RC aircraft.

That old saying: “helicopters don’t fly, they beat the air into submission”…or something like that—multi-rotors defy physics to an even greater degree. Completely software controlled. Your stick inputs modulate the RPM of individual motors on a gradient, and the flight controller reconciles this with the gyro data in a constant loop of feedback. It’s amazing engineering.

I’d like to know the logic for how it compensates for a single motor loss or battery malfunction. Ultimately there is no gliding or autorotation—hope you have a BRS.

The addition of a full body wet suit under the "sensible" life jacket says it all for me, niet.

I would not be willing to fly that over water. Actually i wouldn't fly it at all, it looks like it'd drop like a damn rock if anything went wrong.

I just read the Wall Street Journal article on this.The non-pilot author (who annoyingly refers to the Pivotal's cargo/passenger as the "pilot") talks about how busy "uncontrolled" airspace is with "idiot birds" and "a Navy helicopter flying down the beach at 200 feet." Virtually no training and zero skill is required to this operate this $190,000 toy. The "pilot" is trained to pop the 'chute in case of emergency such as failure in the flight stability automation or loss of one of the rotors.

The author thinks Birds are stupid? This thing is Idiocracy in the air.

Local airport has a broken one sitting in a hangar. Allegedly autoland isn't perfect or idiot proof.