Archer Moves to Third Phase with Horizontal Rotor Transition

Archer Avi­a­tion has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed ‘crit­i­cal azimuth’, the sec­ond of three key phas­es of flight test­ing, the pur­pose of which is to val­i­date the cross­wind capa­bil­i­ties of Archer’s eVTOL air­craft con­fig­u­ra­tion and flight con­trol sys­tems.

The com­pa­ny has now suc­cess­ful­ly flown Mak­er at increas­ing speeds of up to 15 knots, in var­i­ous direc­tions and atti­tudes, hav­ing com­plet­ed the first hov­er test flight in Decem­ber last year.

Fol­low­ing exten­sive ground test­ing, and the addi­tion of Archer’s new tilt pro­peller sys­tem, the air­craft returned to flight test­ing ear­li­er this year and has been fly­ing almost dai­ly.

By allow­ing the Archer Flight Test Team to eval­u­ate incre­men­tal speed increas­es and com­plex manoeu­vres while in hov­er, the cul­mi­na­tion of these tests also demon­strat­ed the robust­ness of the aircraft’s take­off and land­ing capa­bil­i­ties.

Archer’s flight test cam­paign has been designed to care­ful­ly eval­u­ate the company’s sys­tems and tech­nol­o­gy, and the rapid progress made by the com­pa­ny with Mak­er has allowed the val­i­da­tion of a num­ber of tech­nolo­gies for Archer’s pro­duc­tion air­craft.

Hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly val­i­dat­ed var­i­ous sys­tems through this sec­ond phase of flight test­ing, Archer is now shift­ing into the third phase of its pro­gram dur­ing which it will eval­u­ate the aircraft’s per­for­mance at increas­ing for­ward speeds. At the cur­rent rate of progress, the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to antic­i­pate expand­ing to full tran­si­tion flight by the end of the year.

Archer CEO Adam Gold­stein said: “Every flight test we con­duct pro­vides us with a trea­sure trove of data, val­i­dat­ing our design and rapid­ly pro­pelling us towards our vision for eVTOL air trav­el.

“This lat­est mile­stone is tru­ly excit­ing and not only rein­forces the capa­bil­i­ties of our air­craft design, but of our high­ly inno­v­a­tive team. We’re excit­ed to share more updates as we move the cam­paign even fur­ther for­ward in the com­ing months.”

Yes­ter­day, Archer Avi­a­tion entered into an agree­ment with Hon­ey­well to sup­ply flight con­trol actu­a­tion and ther­mal man­age­ment tech­nolo­gies for Archer’s 12 tilt 6 air­craft con­fig­u­ra­tion.

Ear­li­er this month, Archer Avi­a­tion and air­craft com­po­nents man­u­fac­tur­er FACC entered into an agree­ment to fab­ri­cate and sup­ply key fuse­lage and wing ele­ments for an eVTOL air­craft cur­rent­ly under devel­op­ment.