India: “Seahorse to Showcase SH5 Seaplane VTOL at Noida UAM Expo (Jan’ 19th-22nd)”

Goa-based Sea­horse Air Ltd (SAL), devel­op­er of a Sea­plane VTOL, is show­cas­ing its SH5 amphibi­ous craft at the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Expo (Jan­u­ary 19th-22nd) in Noi­da, India says a LinkedIn post from the com­pa­ny Chief Design and Inno­va­tion Offi­cer, Deep­ak Patha­nia. The craft has been co-devel­oped with Scot­tish drone com­pa­ny, Flow­copter.

Seahorse’s team has already test-flown 18 scaled pro­to­types, while its joint ven­ture part­ner recent­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly tri­alled new­ly designed VTOL pro­pellers in the UK and Den­mark, using a 500kg drone quad­copter. In fact, SAL revised its SH5 design three times last year to adapt to the issues of fast chang­ing propul­sion and engine capac­i­ties.

The company’s web­site says, “(The SH5) is designed to trans­form trans­porta­tion in coastal, island, water-inun­dat­ed and chal­leng­ing ter­rains such as snow-cov­ered regions. SAL plans to devel­op and oper­ate the SH5 as a glob­al “micro-air­line” ser­vice with region­al partners/operators. Its appli­ca­tions extend far beyond pas­sen­ger trans­port, includ­ing air ambu­lance, air car­go deliv­ery, search & res­cue oper­a­tions and even joy rides.”

It con­tin­ues, “The SH5 oper­ates across land, air, and water. Its VTOL capa­bil­i­ties allow for take-offs and land­ings with almost zero infra­struc­ture, just a small deck, patch of land or body of water is required. 

“Pow­ered by two sets of patent­ed hydraulic propul­sion sys­tems, each pow­ered by a Rotax engine, the SH5 ensures redun­dan­cy, reli­a­bil­i­ty and peak per­for­mance. For enhanced safe­ty, SAL aims to oper­ate the ser­vices exclu­sive­ly over water while in air­borne mode, fly­ing at a low alti­tude of just 30 ft above sea lev­el and fly­ing only above water.”

Accord­ing to the site, the eVTOL’s spec­i­fi­ca­tions now include:-

: Range 3 hours, 450 km — Speed 150 km/h.

: Max take-off weight, 2000 Kg.

: Pay­load capac­i­ty, 550 Kg.

: Take-off/­land­ing capa­ble from both water and land.

: Eight sets of co-axi­al rotors (total 16).

: Propul­sion sys­tem devel­oped by flow­copter is patent­ed as ‘dig­i­tal dis­place­ment hydraulic trans­mis­sion tech­nol­o­gy’.

This sys­tem is placed in the craft’s floats/pontoons with the cab­in in the body/fuselage bolt­ed to these floats. The motor and pro­pellers lie on the rotor clus­ter piv­ot­ed on the fuse­lage.

The post says, “This patent pend­ing mod­u­lar design enables easy replace­abil­i­ty, easy trans­port, spread-out pro­duc­tion options and sim­pli­fied main­te­nance.” Sea­horse states the SH5 will expe­ri­ence its first flight lat­er on this year.

The company’s dis­play at the Noi­da Expo can be found in Hall 5 at stall 06/07.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.seahorseair.com

https://www.flowcopter.com

(Images: Sea­horse)

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