Garrow Aircraft LLC released in 2008 its unique and innovative aircraft design, called the Verticopter®, literally “Vertical Wing”, which is optimized for niche markets such as Aerial Surveillance, Reconnaissance, Border Patrol, News Coverage and VIP Transport.
The Verticopter® is a new convertiplane that is highly scalable from toys, to drones, UAVs and to manned vehicles and will turn your runway "into a thing of the past." Capable of VTOL or STOVL and very high cruise speeds, it serves those markets more efficiently than any helicopter.
It is more than just a CGI concept as the proof-of-concept has been flying for approx. 3 years as a remote-controlled UAV and 3 prototypes completed 27 flights, all completed at the comfortable runways (9000-ft long) of NASA AMES, Moffett Field, CA.
This design has been evangelized on the internet and sold as a flight simulator to 1,000 private licensees, at a rate of a bit less than 2 licenses sold per day, this creating a fairly large community of avid sim pilots.
This project is highly scalable and 7 reference designs were created and flown within the same simulator, with wingspans ranging from 3 feet to 65 feet.
The reference designs were made with Blender 2.4x and this design database was exported to both the simulator graphic database and to 3D-to-2D conversion tools, then on to a laser cutter to build the UAV templates.
A handful of patents were issued in the US and overseas, and 50% did grant to date. This architecture can be licensed for civilian or military applications, one of which being air surveillance.
Thanks a lot for supporting this project by voting for it.
Oliver Garrow.
President and founder,
Garrow Aircraft LLC.
PS: more details and videos are posted at www.verticopter.com and www.verticopter.net
Voting
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ABOUT THE ENTRANT
- Name:Oliver Garrow
- Type of entry:teamTeam members:Dan Klaue - Digital Keychain Media Productions
Mark Sumich - NASA Ames - Profession:
- Number of times previously entering contest:never
- Oliver's favorite design and analysis tools:Blender, Catia, ViaCad, planemaker, SketchUp
- For managing CAD data Oliver's company uses:Blender
- Oliver's hobbies and activities:green power, RC and UAVs
- Oliver belongs to these online communities:x-plane.org, verticopter.com, verticopter.net
- Oliver is inspired by:lack of efficient helicopter design, V22 osprey.
- Hardware used for this entry:3D printer and laser cutterSoftware used for this entry:Blender 2.4, ViaCad 6
- Patent status:pending