SAMAD aerospace unveils its new Personal Air Vehicle VTOL, the Q‑Starling

SAMAD aero­space has launched its high-end VTOL Per­son­al Air Vehi­cle con­cept, the Q‑Starling, which it says rep­re­sents a new pin­na­cle in future sus­tain­able air­craft design.

Seat­ing one pas­sen­ger and a pilot, the Q‑Starling takes inspi­ra­tion from clas­sic air­craft such as the Han­d­ley Page Vic­tor, BAE Sys­tems Hawk and P‑51 Mus­tang, and high-end sports cars. Mea­sur­ing just over eight metres in length and with a wing span of under eight metres, the Q‑Starling has a max­i­mum cruise speed of 360mph and 500-mile range.

Mate­ri­als used to build the air­craft will be of ultra-light car­bon fibre, giv­ing a high­er per­for­mance capa­bil­i­ty and enabling semi-aer­o­bat­ic manoeu­vres, due to the increased strength of the com­pos­ite mate­r­i­al and design. 

Nor­man Wijk­er, Chief Tech­nol­o­gy of SAMAD aero­space and design­er of the Q‑Starling, said: “I want­ed to cre­ate some­thing that was high per­for­mance, but with the abil­i­ty to take-off and land ver­ti­cal­ly.

“Know­ing that costs were not a major con­sid­er­a­tion was extreme­ly lib­er­at­ing, as it allowed me the use of the best mate­ri­als, and the best tech­nolo­gies to pro­duce some­thing that any wealthy own­er would be proud to own.”

The Q‑Starling will be pow­ered by a hybrid-elec­tric tur­bo-gen­er­a­tor, pro­vid­ing pow­er for a large diam­e­ter hov­er fan and a fly-by-wire con­trolled ‘Reac­tion Con­trol Sys­tem’ (RCS). The tur­bo-gen­er­a­tor will then pro­vide for­ward thrust once the air­craft has tran­si­tioned from ver­ti­cal flight. 

Con­trolled by a com­pre­hen­sive elec­tron­ic flight sys­tem, the air­craft will also have numer­ous and exten­sive safe­ty sys­tems built-in to pre­vent it from depart­ing the flight enve­lope. In keep­ing with oth­er ultra-light air­craft, it will fea­ture as a bal­lis­tic recov­ery sys­tem. 

The tra­di­tion­al rud­der ped­als have been absorbed into the flight sys­tem and present the pilot with a sim­pli­fied side-stick con­trol. The Q‑Starling will main­tain full author­i­ta­tive con­trol but hav­ing the ben­e­fit of a sim­pli­fied con­trol inter­face. 

The Q‑Starling air­craft is expect­ed to have a low entry bar­ri­er to pri­vate flight with an expect­ed con­ver­sion require­ment of around 10 hours for the aver­age Pri­vate Pilot’s Licence (PPL).

Speak­ing from his UK Head Office at Cran­field Tech­nol­o­gy Park, Dr. Seyed Mohseni, CEO of SAMAD aero­space, added: “The Q‑Starling will give own­ers the ulti­mate lux­u­ry in per­son­al hybrid-elec­tric fly­ing. The effi­cient sus­tain­able Q‑Starling will give pas­sen­gers unpar­al­leled point-to-point mobil­i­ty options.” 

SAMAD aero­space is also cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing its hybrid-elec­tric Star­ling Jet air­craft for com­mer­cial oper­a­tion by 2024. It was announced at the Sin­ga­pore Air Show in 2018 and can seat up to 10 pas­sen­ger, trav­el­ling at a cruise speed of 460mph for 1,500 miles.

It is also work­ing on its e‑Starling Jet, which will be ful­ly pow­ered by elec­tric and can reach a top speed of 300mph. Seat­ing up to sev­en pas­sen­gers, it will have a range of 400 miles and will be tar­get­ing com­mer­cial business/leisure and domes­tic trav­el as ear­ly as 2022.

For more infor­ma­tion about SAMAD aero­space, vis­it www.samadaerospace.com