... The complete story on the History of the FSC-1



LaBiche Aerospace developed a classification of potential roadable aircraft that include:

  1. Flying Cars (more resemblance to cars)
    1-2 Seats (economy class)
    4 Seats (sedan class)
    6+ Seats (SUV class)
  2. Roadable Aircraft (more resemblance to airplanes)
    1-2 Seat
    4+ Seats
    6+ Seats
  3. Vertical or Short Take-off and Landing (V/STOL)
    Vectored Thrust (resembles the Harrier Jump Jet)
    Powered Lift (resembles a tilt rotor)
    Helicopter
    Auto-Gyro
  4. Specialty Vehicle
    Amphibian Roadable (Fly, Float, and Drive)

Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL)
In recent years, lots of attention has been placed on vehicles that can take-off and land vertically. Vertical take-off and landing is a distinct flight characteristic and it is very useful in certain situations. These situations include emergency, surveillance, rescue, and other missions in which the landing zone is confined or in which slow speed/hover is required. There is a huge penalty to VTOL operation in terms of cost, payload, and complexity. And while it has been the dream of most pilots to takeoff vertically and fly away, the fact is there are very few places you have permission to land with dangerous 100+ mph winds being stirred up. General aviation has spent, and is continuing to spend, a great deal of money to maintain 17,000+ airports with long runways and radar systems around the US for conventional aircraft. It is usually possible to find a local or regional airport within 50-100 miles from any location in the US from which to takeoff.


However, the early search for a personal roadable aircraft focused on VTOL designs at first. This was due to the fact that founder,Mitchell LaBiche worked in the VTOL industry for nearly ten years, while working on programs such as the "fly-by-wire" Advanced Apache program and other civilian helicopter and auto-giro designs. A wide variety of designs were tried ranging from helicopters withfolding blades to cars with shrouded rotors buried in the vehicle. Regardless of the configuration, the same problems always came up when trying to package a VTOL vehicle for personal roadable use.


Problems with Vectored Thrust and Powered Lift Vehicles

  • High horsepower requirement leading to cost and weight.
  • High noise, due to high installed HP.
  • High exhaust air velocities over 100+ mph, due to small jets.
  • Safety issues with engine out scenarios.
  • If using a large rotor system, where do you put it for road travel?
Problems with Helicopters and Auto-giros
  • Large rotor system; where do you put it for road travel?
  • High installed horsepower leading to cost and weight.
  • Slow airspeed
  • Small range
Roadable Aircraft
Focus shifted from VTOL vehicles to a simpler vehicle, the roadable airplane. During the course of working on a two-seat reconnaissance vehicle for the US Marines, worked was performed on a number of roadable aircraft configurations. These configurations included conventional looking aircraft with folding wings and tail structures. However, regardless of the configuration, roadable airplanes always exhibited one or more of the following major objections:
  1. Limited utility due to poor roadablility. Potential owners would not prefer to drive the vehicle due to awkward or poor ground performance and appearance thereby negating one of the major benefits of a roadable vehicle.
  2. Stability issues in ground mode with wing and lifting surfaces developing large lateral drag profile, lightweight vehicle and weight distribution.
  3. Light weight landing gear susceptible to road hazards and potholes.
  4. Tampering issues without the ability to completely conceal all lifting surfaces.

The Unicycle and Necessary Complexity.
In design, there is a principle called - K.I.S.S. (keep it simple… stupid). This is a very popular concept. However, in engineering, there is another principle called "necessary complexity". An example of this is the unicycle. There is no question that the unicycle is the simplest form of a wheeled vehicle. Then why isn't everyone buying and riding them? It is because the customer has to work much harder at rider a unicycle than the next-complex wheeled vehicle, the bicycle. In designing a vehicle that flies and drives, it is necessary to find the least complex vehicle that could gain market acceptance.

 

LaBiche Aerospace Marketing Evaluation
The break through came when we asked a couple of key questions.

  • "OK. Some pretty smart people have built cars in the past that could fly but they didn't sell.So, what kind of vehicle do customers want to buy?"
LaBiche Aerospace launched an extensive marketing and questionnaire evaluation lasting several years. From this evaluation, it was determined that the owners would really prefer to drive everywhere possible (if they could only "magically" shorten the travel time). The majority (95.7%) of the final destinations potential owners wanted to go was only available by driving. In other words, a vertical take-off & landing vehicle would NOT buy you any additional advantage in the majority of the final destinations… you still have to drive to the final location. And a roadable aircraft would be severely comprised in drivability, nearly eliminating any marketing edge it might have over existing aircraft. The survey also said that the potential customers would be using their vehicle as a car approximately 85% (±5%) of the time. The appearance in ground mode is extremely important. Ground performance is as important to them as the flying performance. And the criterion for ground performance is quite high, such as today's luxury and sports cars.




Flying Cars and the FSC-1

Under Construction
...........