Horizon Aircraft completes wind tunnel transition flight testing

Hori­zon Air­craft has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed ini­tial tran­si­tion flight test­ing of its Cavorite X5 half-scale eVTOL pro­to­type at Ontario Tech University’s ACE Cli­mat­ic Wind Tun­nel in Cana­da.

Hori­zon Air­craft CEO Bran­don Robin­son said: “The air­craft per­for­mance exceed­ed our expec­ta­tions. We explored for­ward speeds of up to almost 100 km/h, mea­sur­ing aero­dy­nam­ic forces, con­trol author­i­ty, and mechan­i­cal sys­tem func­tion with the wings open at vary­ing fan speeds.

“We were par­tic­u­lar­ly hap­py with pitch and roll sta­bil­i­ty and con­trol through­out the entire tran­si­tion enve­lope, as well as the embed­ded fan per­for­mance. Hav­ing real-world test results match­ing our detailed pre­dic­tions was fur­ther endorse­ment of our world class engi­neer­ing.

“We can now use these results to refine our com­pu­ta­tion­al flu­id dynam­ics mod­el­ling and fur­ther reduce the risk of the out­door tran­si­tion flight test pro­gramme that will begin soon.”

Horizon’s patent­ed hybrid eVTOL con­cept allows the air­craft to fly 98% of its mis­sion in a very low-drag con­fig­u­ra­tion like a tra­di­tion­al air­craft and is one of the only eVTOL air­craft cur­rent­ly able to do so.

Fly­ing most of the mis­sion as a nor­mal air­craft is safer, more effi­cient, and will be eas­i­er to cer­ti­fy than rad­i­cal new eVTOL designs, claims Hori­zon. The air­craft can also oper­ate in Short Take­off and Land­ing (STOL) or Con­ven­tion­al Take­off and Land­ing (CTOL) modes. The full-scale air­craft will be pow­ered by a hybrid elec­tric archi­tec­ture that can recharge the bat­tery array in-flight while pro­vid­ing addi­tion­al sys­tem redun­dan­cy and flex­i­bil­i­ty.

Hori­zon Air­craft will move to out­door tran­si­tion flight test­ing short­ly as it con­tin­ues the detailed design of its full-scale air­craft, antic­i­pat­ing final assem­bly for flight test­ing in 2025.

In Feb­ru­ary, 3C and Hori­zon Air­craft signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing under which the two com­pa­nies will col­lab­o­rate on aspects of the con­tin­ued devel­op­ment and path to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of Hori­zon Aircraft’s Cavorite X5 pro­gramme.

3C and Hori­zon Air­craft sign col­lab­o­ra­tion on cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and ser­vices