Watch Video: “Skyfly’s Axe Completes First Piloted Fixed-Wing Flights”

Skyfly recent­ly announced, its Axe VCA (Ver­ti­cal­ly Capa­ble Air­craft) has com­plet­ed the sec­ond of three key mile­stones in its flight test­ing pro­gram, with the air­craft now hav­ing under­tak­en its first wing-borne test flights, reports a press release. 

The air­craft has con­duct­ed such flights of around 17 min­utes in dura­tion at heights of up to 2,500ft. The Axe was found to be sta­ble and con­trol­lable in all con­di­tions, with benign stall char­ac­ter­is­tics. 

Michael Thomp­son, CEO of Skyfly, com­ment­ed, “Dur­ing our lat­est test flights, The Axe per­formed beyond expec­ta­tions in for­ward flight, show­cas­ing excep­tion­al effi­cien­cy, sta­bil­i­ty and stall-han­dling char­ac­ter­is­tics. Its intu­itive design ensures that even inex­pe­ri­enced pilots can fly it with ease.”

Please Watch Video

In the for­ward flight mode, the Axe VCA can oper­ate like a nor­mal fixed-wing air­plane, cruis­ing at speeds of 100mph with min­i­mal ener­gy con­sump­tion. It can also per­form ener­gy-effi­cient con­ven­tion­al take-offs and land­ings on a run­way. 

Thomp­son con­tin­ued, “The tran­si­tion tests, to and from the hov­er, can now hap­pen much faster than antic­i­pat­ed with­out the need for any mod­i­fi­ca­tions or design changes. This has all been pos­si­ble thanks to our incred­i­ble team who have put in hours of hard work.” 

When no run­way is avail­able, the Axe can tran­si­tion to a nose-high atti­tude and enter rotor-borne flight, allow­ing it to hov­er much like a heli­copter, and take-off or land ver­ti­cal­ly. 

The next phase of test­ing will see the Axe demon­strate air­borne tran­si­tions between the for­ward flight and hov­er modes. 

The air­craft is avail­able to pre-order: www.skyflytech.com/order.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.skyfly.aero

(Images: Skyfly)

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