Jump ahead and see some pictures!

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The Program
As regularly as clockwork, in the past our imaginations have been stimulated by the appearance of new flying cars in aviation journals and Sunday supplements. Some have shown great promise, like Molt Taylor's Aerocar, others have lacked in many ways. All have faded from view without ever having an opportunity to verify the contribution such a machine could make to the aviation spectrum.

The Volante is another candidate for your attention, but- in contrast to many past efforts by others, it is both a sound car and a quality aircraft. Further, it avoids the impasse that has stopped all such programs in the past. This stopper has been the huge production investment that financial people have not been willing to provide for a machine of unproven, even if promising, worth. In contrast, the Volante flying car will be offered to homebuilders in kit form for their own assembly and individualistic touches. The customers would be the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) members and followers. This magnificent organization has, as most of you know, provided, under FAA guidance and sanction, plus Paul Poberezny's watchful eye, more home-builts in the last 40 years than the leading light plane builder, Cessna. This year over 10,000 kits for such aircraft will be sold to enthusiastic builders according to Kitplanes magazine.

Here is how I have put this material together
First, I have a section on how I came up with the requirements for the Volante, that is what kind of flying car did I want and why. You may have different goals and I accept and recognize this as being appropriate, however this section sets out the problem I wanted to solve with my design...

Second, I will tell you about the Volante itself and you can see how close I came to my objective.

Frankly, the feasibility prototype has been just great for proving that a quality flying car can be built but with minor changes in configuration and the changeover mechanisms a vastly improved product has been created in the production prototype. These changes I will show you later.

The requirement:
O.K. lets get started-What did I want my flying car to do for me. The answer to that question defines the design. Lets examine some options. First general goals then proceeding into more detail.

I immediately decided against trying for VTOL. The reason for this is that most of suburbia and city dwellers will not take kindly to the noise and downwash problems these machines currently present, particularly when you go to work real early in the morning or come home late at night, Accordingly, if you must operate from an airport, VTOL makes little sense. In time as attitudes, regulations and technologies change the VTOL machines will probably have a more prominent place in the market but at the moment they do not seem to fill a practical large- scale need in any practical manner. On top of that they are all much more expensive than the customer I am aiming at can afford. I want a vehicle that will enhance the life of the vast majority of neither rich nor poor pilots, as well as those potential pilots, who are looking for more utility in their investment at less cost and complexity in training than a current instrument rating and aircraft entails.

For similar reasons the "Sunday supplement" flying car ahead of you on the freeway which suddenly sprouts wings and takes off from its place in traffic, is currently impractical, as well. It also has regulatory, if not technical problems, and this is something we will have to evolve into.

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