Model Airplanes

AeroMobil has been working to make the flying car a reality for decades, but it looks like the Czech company still has a little work to do.

The company over the weekend announced that a recent test flight of its AeroMobil 3.0 prototype didn’t go exactly as planned. The flying car made it to an altitude of approximately 900 feet during the May 8 test flight when inventor and test pilot Stefan Klein “encountered an unexpected situation.”

AeroMobil didn’t go into detail about what happened, but said that Klein activated the advanced ballistic parachute system, and landed the Jetsons-like vehicle without getting injured. In its statement, the company spun the incident in a positive light, noting that it gave the prototype’s parachute an opportunity to prove itself “fully functional.”

AeroMobil added that data from the test flight will be “thoroughly analyzed” and used to improve the prototype. The company said it will continue testing the current prototype 3.0 after replacing the damaged parts. Images of the vehicle post-crash show it was pretty banged up, but not completely totaled.

#Aviationsafety AeroMobil

Article source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2484019,00.asp

• Sobbing passengers were escorted off the plane and taken to hospital
• One witness reports hearing a huge bang and seeing the wing crumple
• Experts are questioning the safety of the aircraft following the crash 

By

Imogen Calderwood

and
Edward Chow For Mailonline

Published:
10:24 EST, 11 May 2015

|
Updated:
11:15 EST, 11 May 2015

Several passengers emerged in floods of tears after the Joy Air flight to Fuzhou airport finally lay still, mangled and broken, according to the People’s Daily Online. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/peoplesdaily/article-3076949/Terrified-passengers-saw-plane-s-wing-break-apart-skidded-control-landing-China.html

By Ryan Mac, Heng Shao and Frank Bi

Frank Wang Tao has never been arrested. He pays his taxes on time. And he rarely drinks. But on the eve of a January sit-down with FORBES–his first public interview this year with a Western publication–the Chinese national who happens to be the world’s first drone billionaire found himself on the wrong end of American authorities.

A U.S. government intelligence employee in Washington, D.C., some 8,000 miles away from Wang’s perch in Shenzhen, had had a little too much to drink and took a friend’s four-propeller drone out for a spin in the wee hours. Inexperienced, he lost the aircraft in the dark and, after a brief search, called off his drunken hunt. By dawn that 1-foot-by-1-foot whirlybird was a global news story and subject of a Secret Service investigation–after crash-landing on the White House lawn.

Wang built that robot. He also created the one that a protester used last month to land a bottle of radioactive waste on the roof of the Japanese prime minister’s office and developed the one a smuggler used to sneak drugs, a mobile phone and weapons into a prison courtyard outside of London in March. The idea of people using your product to break laws and social boundaries would give most CEOs nightmares, but the inconspicuous mastermind

Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2015/05/06/dji-drones-frank-wang-china-billionaire/

Simon Schuster 

The Wright Brothers

By David McCullough

Simon Schuster, 336 pp., $30

David McCullough’s popular biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Adams succeeded with readers because they weren’t about politics or history from a particular point of view, but because they were about real people who happened to be politicians and history-makers.

He brought out the humanity in these iconic figures, although he tamped down Roosevelt’s blood lust, Truman’s suspect background and Adams’ snobbery. Instead, he emphasized their strengths, above all their “American” qualities.

Orville and Wilbur Wright don’t belong in that select company, despite McCullough’s sincere efforts to elevate these hard-working brothers to a lofty place in the American pantheon. His new biography “The Wright Brothers” (Simon Schuster, 336 pp., $30), based on a well-trodden ground of information, refreshes their story in his upbeat, minutely researched manner.

(Tom Hanks recently purchased rights to the book for an HBO miniseries.)

But something’s lacking – interesting characters like Adams, Roosevelt or Truman. While Orville and Wilbur accomplished their goal of powered flight, they missed out on the stuff that makes life interesting – relationships, children, hobbies, fun and most of all, self-reflection.

Instead, it was their sister, Katharine, an Oberlin College graduate and high school teacher who found time, while she managed the household in Dayton and supported her brothers’ airplane projects, to achieve a more rounded life and even married, albeit at 58.

Orville took the marriage hard, McCullough writes, and refused to speak to his sister for

Article source: http://www.cleveland.com/books/index.ssf/2015/05/popular_historian_david_mccull.html