Larry Page’s Sky Motorcycle A Completely Different Ultralight by Willi Tacke The Kitty Hawk company has been working quietly for more than two years: People only knew that the money came from Google founder and Alphabet chief Larry Page and that Page with Zee Aero (and their work on vertical takeoff airplanes) was yet another iron in the fire. Then this past April came the bombshell: shortly after the first flight of the unmanned Lilium in Germany, Kitty Hawk showed their project–and the world was amazed! One day before the big Uber Elevate Summit in Dallas, they showed not an airtaxi nor autonomous aircraft but instead–in the truest sense a ‘Just for Fun’ aircraft–an air motorcycle, a jet ski for the sky. The air moped made its first public appearance at Oshkosh. The spectacle was scheduled to take place at 9:00am, and at 8:30am the beach at the Seaplane Base at Lake Winnebago was slowly filling up–quite unusual, because normally there in the shade of the old trees, the few people there find it rather relaxed. First up, Communications Manager Ellen Cohen explained how the flights would proceed: A flight of three minutes, landing on the pontoon, battery change, and then a second flight. Technical questions would only be answered in a limited way. The Flyer could be seen on a floating platform at a A seat and handlebars like a motorcycle, a control unit, four struts and eight propellers – is this the ultralight of the future? Not likely! But the machine from Kitty Hawk, the second aviation company from Google founder Larry Page, is certainly an interesting approach. It’s a singleseat, manned drone, which is designed to fly under Part 103 regulations (without a pilot license, registration or airworthiness certificates), but only over water. Kitty Hawk Flyer
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