Some months ago a fried from Italy e-mailed me to check in the Internet for BOEING’s Presonal Flying Device contest.
The first words I read in the Internet for the contest were: “Design and build a safe, quiet, ultra-compact, near-VTOL personal flying device capable of flying 20 miles while carrying a single person.”
Great news. Pattakon had already designed a Personal Flying Device (we named it “Portable Flyer” a dozen years ago) with better characteristics than the ones BOEING / GoFly were looking for.
Today, I still read the same “call” at the top of all pages of the Sponsored by BOEING “Herox / GoFly” web site: “Design and build a safe, quiet, ultra-compact, near-VTOL personal flying device capable of flying 20 miles while carrying a single person.”
“The Devil is in the details”, they say. And the details proved far away from the above central rule / “call” of BOEING.
In order to participate, I had first to accept / sign several “agreements” and to pay a US250$ fee (i.e. about as much as it costs a complete UK-patent, from filing the application, to granting the patent, to the first maintenance fee some four years later).
Despite BOEING / GoFly continue to write at the top of all web pages (see also BOEING’s spot in the CNN) about the 20 miles threshold for the range, BOEING / GoFly did not mean 20 miles but only 20 minutes. The 20 miles range was just a VISION of BOEING / GoFly, not an attainable goal. Disappointedly, nobody in BOEING involved in the contest understood the huge difference of a contest for 20 miles range and a contest for 20 minutes duration. Trying to awake them up, in this forum and by commenting in BOEING’s youtube videos for the GoFly contest, I felt like trying to explain to a cow about geometry. Etc, etc.
Back to the Portable Flyer.
It is a pair of extremely compact / lightweight reciprocating Opposed Piston engines, each driving (independently, for safety) its own pair of counter-rotating propellers. We have already built such engines (“proof of concept” prototypes). Functional. You can see several videos of them running on fossil fuels (regular gasoline, Diesel etc). All we have to do is to built, in good quality, a pair of such engines, put four propellers and test the Portable Flyer on air.
The design was complete years before your contest, before your webinar, before your mentors, before your “benefits”, before your “equity agreement” etc.
However, in order to participate in the next phases of BOEING’s contest, I am asked to pay again (this time for insurance etc), I am asked to make a company, I am asked to allow equity from my Intellectual Property to GoFly / BOEING and, who knows, what else (the recipe is simple; to get an “invitation” for the third phase (Fly-Off) I will have first to sign some more “papers / agreements” with BOEING GoFly, and offer what rights they will ask for, otherwise no invitation).
BOEING, come on. BOEING is better that this mesh (unless it is success when 90% of the contestants are threatening to sue BOEING for non transparency). BOEING, put some common sense and reasoning on your thinking about this really simple, and straightforward, contest: it is just about designing and building and demonstrating a Personal Flying Device that can carry a single person safely and quietly 20 miles away.
BOEING do behave as the ordinary people expect from the BOEING: Put aside the GoFly (they failed; don’t you see it?), cancel the nonsense GoFly requires for the next steps and take over the contest. BOEING refund the fees (250 or 500 USD) the contestants paid so far, pay for the insurance of all contestants (if it is really required for the phase II; but let me doubt a lot about it). Forget the equity nonsense. Multiply the prizes (from 2 millions to, say, 10 millions) and make everything TRANSPARENT, open to the public and worthy of BOEING’s name and reputation.
This way both, the BOEING,and the world, will gain from this contest. As it is now, this contest is a mesh.
BOEING, it is your choice. You can allow me continue in your contest, or you can disqualify me as not obeying to the unreasonable requirements of BOEING / GoFly.
Either way,, the Portable Flyer will be manufactured and be demonstrated in the YouTube to prove that it can pass all the thresholds set (plus a useful 200+ miles range on good mileage).
By the way, the Portable Flyer has a maximum dimension of 5ft, 3inch (~1.6m). It is so lightweight that the only landing gear is the legs / feet of the pilot. And as far as I know, from the submissions I saw so far, it is the – by far – most lightweight. In the 10 winners of Phase 1 there are some having, beyond reasonable doubt, 8.5+ ft maximum dimension. Say they cut what is outside the 8.5ft sphere and reduce the maximum dimension to “only” 8.5ft, which means zero points from the dimension, which means 40% of the points lost (I know it is a stupid scoring to give 40% to the maximum dimension and zero points to the range and to the cost and to the take-off weight etc, but this rule is not mine, it is BOEING’s / GoFly’s).
If I was allowed, I would ask the judges: how on earth a Personal Flying Device that sacrifices 40% of the scoring for its BIG size can be the winner of this contest?
For the reader who doubts about the previous and the dates given, please check the following links (the last is from 2006).
@Ken Burner If there is really 20 miles -20minutes problem this speak by itself about rules . Also did you or somebody else been answered about the numbers of brics in the circle ? I guess no But this is important for determining the max weight of the craft and the max vertical takeoff speed. The brick problem was the point where they have lost me :)
“GoFly, sponsored by Boeing, is challenging the world’s brightest inventors, designers and engineers to design and build a personal flying device. It MUST BE capable of near-vertical take-off and landing, and ABLE TO CARRY AN INDIVIDUAL FOR 20 MILES WITHOUT REFUELLING OR RECHARGING.”
For the average visitor of the Herox / GoFly / BOEING web site (i.e. the visitor who is not interesting, or capable, to deal with the details), the above press release is still the case (unless I am the only one that reads at the top-right of all web pages of Herox GoFly: “Design and build a safe, quiet, ultra-compact, near-VTOL personal flying device capable of flying 20 miles while carrying a single person”, while at the top-left it writes : “SPONSORED By BOEING”).
Yet this is false / misleading / deceiving information for the public.
And if everything ends up according the current rules / procedures / schedule of the GoFly contest, and a winner Personal Flying Device is eventually nominated (1 million USD prize), the possibility the winner to “NOT be able to carry an individual for 20 miles without refuelling or recharge” is almost a certainty (the points for the low noise cover 50% of the total scoring, the maximum speed counts for only 10%, the total take-off weight covers 0% of the scoring, the range covers 0% of the scoring, the energy or the fuel consumed covers 0% of the scoring).
This is why I say that BOEING got trapped (they can’t claim they don’t understand the difference between the distance (miles) and the time (minutes)). And now, together with the GoFly that they sponsor, are misleading the public.
To BOEING:
It is simple to get out of the trap:
Take over the contest and correct it.
Cancel the nonsense required from the contestants in order to proceed with the next phases.
Refund the fees the contestants paid so far (it is no more than 50,000USD in total).
Multiply the prizes (10 millions fit better to BOEING’s fame; “A copper coin would suit the beggar’s need, but gold coins suit Alexander’s giving”).
And make everything TRANSPARENT, and open to the public, and worthy of BOEING’s name and reputation.
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