Archer’s eVTOL Aircraft Returns to the Sky

After the recent and sur­pris­ing depar­ture of Co-Founder and CEO, Brett Adcock, Archer remains on course, deter­mined to gain full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion lead­ing to the start of com­mer­cial flights in 2024 via its eVTOL named The Mak­er.

The craft’s first ven­ture into the skies took place on Decem­ber 16th, 2021, at 10.30am (PT) when it accel­er­at­ed off the ground and suc­cess­ful­ly hov­ered in-place before return­ing safe­ly. This also result­ed in the check­ing of the company’s flight con­trol sys­tem while in the sky and the end-to-end close of flight soft­ware.

Six months lat­er, Archer has resumed flights to tri­al the first use of its tilt pro­peller sys­tem (TPS) for active con­trol dur­ing hov­er. The web­site, flyingmag.com, spoke to Chief Engi­neer, Geoff Bow­er, who said, “We have now returned Mak­er to the air with an updat­ed con­fig­u­ra­tion that sup­ports tran­si­tion flight and the sys­tem per­formed as expect­ed.” 

Geoff Bow­er

He explained the craft remains on track to test full tran­si­tion from ver­ti­cal (rotor-borne) to hor­i­zon­tal (wing-borne) flight by the end of this year. Per­fect­ing the tran­si­tion phase is wide­ly acknowl­edged to be among the most chal­leng­ing hur­dles in devel­op­ing eVTOL air­craft. 

Archer has announced a series of key data sets that its team will be gath­er­ing dur­ing these upcom­ing tri­als. They include flight mechan­ics mod­el val­i­da­tion includ­ing trim motor RPMs and pow­er draw as a func­tion of air­speed; acoustic data; con­trol sys­tem sta­bil­i­ty mar­gins esti­mat­ed using sys­tem iden­ti­fi­ca­tion meth­ods; and pro­cess­ing data to improve sim­u­la­tion mod­els of vehi­cle aero­dy­nam­ics, bat­tery per­for­mance and motor effi­cien­cy to match flight test data.

Last week, the com­pa­ny which is sup­port­ed by Unit­ed Air­lines, announced it had hired esteemed avi­a­tion exec­u­tive, Tom Ander­son, as its new Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer (COO). Ander­son arrives after serv­ing with Air­bus, Boe­ing, Vir­gin Amer­i­ca, ATR Air­craft, and more recent­ly, as COO at Breeze Air­ways.

“The Mak­er,” explains fly­ing­mag, “is pow­ered by an assort­ment of lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies and is designed to cruise at 130 knots with a range of 60 sm. Noise lev­el is expect­ed to be 45 deci­bels at 2,000 ft agl. It fea­tures a v‑tail empen­nage and a 12-tilt‑6 con­fig­u­ra­tion that includes six prop-rotors to cre­ate thrust dur­ing hor­i­zon­tal flight.”

Archer has cho­sen Los Ange­les and Mia­mi as its two launch cities where the com­pa­ny has employed its own trans­port mod­el­ling soft­ware, Prime Radi­ant, to decide where to sta­tion its ini­tial ver­ti­port oper­a­tions.

Mean­while, web­site www.newatlas.com spoke with Archer’s Direc­tor of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment, Andrew Cum­mins, who com­ment­ed, “We’re focused on a crawl, walk, run approach. In the ear­ly years, 2024–25, we’ll launch an ini­tial net­work with up to five ver­ti­ports, just a hand­ful, to prove the oper­a­tion, prove the routes, prove the demand, and real­ly show com­mu­ni­ties the ben­e­fits we can bring with this urban air mobil­i­ty ser­vice.”

Andrew Cum­mins

The com­pa­ny has signed a deal to build rooftop ver­ti­ports on top of park­ing garages, although Cum­mins says the ser­vice is like­ly to begin a lit­tle more con­ven­tion­al­ly. “In the Unit­ed States, there are over 5,000 pub­lic-use air­ports, and an even larg­er num­ber of heli­pads. Some of these are under-utilised and we think may form a strong foun­da­tion in the ear­ly years. We’re also look­ing at oth­er types of assets like rooftop decks and park­ing struc­tures that we can retro­fit.”

He con­tin­ued, “There’s not a lot of dif­fer­ence between an exist­ing heli­port and a ver­ti­port of the future with lit­tle retro­fit and mod­i­fi­ca­tion required. By stick­ing a charg­er on it, maybe a ter­mi­nal facil­i­ty for pas­sen­ger com­fort, maybe some line main­te­nance work and you change the use of that facil­i­ty. We already have a lot of what we need to get this indus­try off the ground.”

Archer must then cre­ate its own end-to-end trans­port ser­vice, as well as a cus­tomer-fac­ing app to make the process as easy as pos­si­ble.

Cum­mins point­ed out, “Just like any app on your phone, we’ll let you put in your des­ti­na­tion, and then we plan a seam­less jour­ney for you, door to door. That includes the ‘first mile’ get­ting you to the ver­ti­port, and what­ev­er mobil­i­ty option you’d like for the last mile to your final des­ti­na­tion.”

He con­tin­ued, “Right now, many cities in the Unit­ed States have been built around vehi­cle own­er­ship. We’ve built a lot of con­crete, but our pop­u­la­tion growth has sur­passed the capac­i­ty of that con­crete. We think there’s a lot of poten­tial here for urban air mobil­i­ty to com­ple­ment the exist­ing infra­struc­ture and ease some of the con­ges­tion on our roads, while also begin­ning the decar­bon­i­sa­tion of avi­a­tion.”

(News Source: https://www.flyingmag.com and https://newatlas.com)

(Pics: Archer Avi­a­tion)