9 June 2015
The unusual four-seat CarterCopter known as the Personal Air Vehicle (PAV) has been giving displays and attending events for the past six years, all the way improving its performance through continual tests. But it’s always seemed a long way from going into any form of production.
Now Jay Carter, the man behind the radical design, agrees. His company, Carter Aviation Technologies, is ramping down the development and flight tests, and instead putting its effort into finding partners to help put the CarterCopter PAV into production.
“The time has come, and some would say overdue, to shift gears and focus on getting the technology into the marketplace, ” said Jay Carter.
The flight tests have been thorough to prove Carter’s concept of Slowed Rotor/Compound (SR/C) technology which uses both a fixed-wing and a rotor. The idea is that the faster the aircraft goes, more of its weight is transferred to the wing rather than the rotor. By using both technologies, the CarterCopter is able to have vertical lift like a helicopter, with the cruise of a fixed-wing aircraft.
Heading up the search for production partners will be Jon Tatro, who joined the company in 2013 after working for Bell Helicopters for 20 years.
