Verticopter: new & realistic STOVL aircraft

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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

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  • ABOUT THE ENTRANT

  • Name:
    Oliver Garrow
  • Type of entry:
    team
    Team members:
    Dan Klaue - Digital Keychain Media Productions
    Mark Sumich - NASA Ames
  • Profession:
    Business Owner/Manager
  • 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 cutter
    Software used for this entry:
    Blender 2.4, ViaCad 6
  • Patent status:
    pending