Horizon Aircraft Advances Cavorite X7 Flight Model Through Partnership With Marshall Aerospace

Hori­zon Air­craft and glob­al part­ner Mar­shall Aero­space has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed a flight dynam­ics and con­trol mod­el to sup­port the devel­op­ment and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of Hori­zons’ hybrid-elec­tric VTOL air­craft.

Hori­zon part­nered with Mar­shal­l’s Aero Engi­neer­ing Ser­vices for their exten­sive expe­ri­ence and proven track record with plat­form mod­i­fi­ca­tions, spe­cial mis­sion con­ver­sions and oth­er applied engi­neer­ing pro­grammes relat­ed to the dynam­ics, sta­bil­i­ty and con­trol of air­craft.

Hori­zon Air­craft Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer Tom Brass­ing­ton, said: “The deliv­ery of the first flight mod­el for the Cavorite X7 marks a strong start to our part­ner­ship with Mar­shall Aero­space. Mar­shal­l’s engi­neers have inte­grat­ed seam­less­ly into our devel­op­ment process, serv­ing as an exten­sion of our team and apply­ing their exper­tise to devel­op­ing one of the safest, tough­est, and most per­for­mant mod­ern VTOL air­craft.”

The Mar­shall team has now con­duct­ed exten­sive analy­sis to mod­el how the X7’s aero­dy­nam­ic, propul­sion and mass char­ac­ter­is­tics influ­ence flight behav­iour. The out­come is a six degrees of free­dom (6‑DOF) flight mod­el to sup­port devel­op­ment of the X7’s safe­ty-crit­i­cal con­trol sys­tem, enabling Hori­zon Air­craft to pre­dict and opti­mise how the air­craft responds to con­trol inputs.

Mark Hew­er, Aero Engi­neer­ing Ser­vices Direc­tor, Mar­shall Aero­space, added: “We’re delight­ed to sup­port Hori­zon Air­craft through safe­ty-crit­i­cal devel­op­ment work on a prod­uct that presents new pos­si­bil­i­ties for com­mer­cial and mil­i­tary avi­a­tion.

“This pro­gramme shows how our deep engi­neer­ing expe­ri­ence trans­lates across com­plex chal­lenges rang­ing from plat­form mod­i­fi­ca­tions to spe­cial mis­sion con­ver­sions and test beds.”

Mar­shall Aero­space is a British aero­space and defence com­pa­ny with more than a cen­tu­ry of engi­neer­ing excel­lence. The com­pa­ny spe­cial­izes in air­craft design, inte­gra­tion, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, main­te­nance, repair and over­haul (MRO), and advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing.

A glob­al leader in C‑130 Her­cules sup­port since 1966, Mar­shall has earned mul­ti­ple world-first accred­i­ta­tions and recog­ni­tions for its exper­tise on the plat­form. The com­pa­ny part­ners with gov­ern­ments, mil­i­tary oper­a­tors, and lead­ing OEMs world­wide to deliv­er com­plex aero­space and defence pro­grams.