Building hybrid VTOL aircraft in Australia. Sharing what we test, what breaks and what we learn. Also into rockets, drones, EVs and AI.
Joined September 2026
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FPV won the expendable war.
Nobody solved reusable speed at real payload.
Hexes are slow. Fixed-wing needs a runway. One-ways die once.
What’s missing: a VTOL that launches vertical, flies fast, recovers clean, and scales toward 100 kg — without becoming a flying truck.
That’s the gap.
We’re on it.
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A telecom outage halted every flight in the US on Friday. Before lifting the ground stop, the FAA says it tested its systems to confirm they were stable.
What had to pass before the first departure was cleared, and how long did that check take? xitter.gq/FAANews/status/2121439…
The safety of the flying public is always the FAA’s highest priority. The FAA lifted the ground stop and some flight departures are resuming. Before clearing flights to resume, we thoroughly tested our systems to confirm they were stable and that operations remain reliable.
Passengers should contact their airlines for flight updates.
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New drone idea: avoid the spots where your own camera can't be trusted.
DroneDiffusion flags glare and reflections in the camera view, then plans around them. Trained in sim, flown on a real drone.
A map can say "clear" while the camera is blind.
arxiv.org/abs/2611.15277
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Eve's Vector software ran the takeoff and landing slots at a pop-up helipad by Interlagos for the São Paulo Grand Prix. Peak: 100+ helicopter flights on Sunday.
What was the tightest slot gap at peak, and what did one late flight do to the queue? xitter.gq/EveAirMobility/status/…
Eve’s Vector software supported Revo’s helicopter operations at the São Paulo Grand Prix weekend, managing ground ops and slots at Interlagos, with a peak of 100+ flights on Sunday.
Read more: linkedin.com/pulse/eve-air-m…
#EveAirMobility #eVTOL
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Heat cameras are a go-to for spotting drones at night. New study: they still miss a lot.
The best setup missed over 40% of drones, worst on tiny ones, busy city backdrops, and drones as warm as their background.
Training data beat model size.
arxiv.org/abs/2611.16724
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Wing is putting up to $125M into a 15,000 sq ft plant in Fort Worth, built to make tens of thousands of delivery drones a year.
That is a small floor for that volume. Is it final assembly of bought-in parts, or are motors and airframes made there too? xitter.gq/Wing/status/2120951581…
As an American innovation company, Wing is investing $125M to support building more lightweight aircraft in the U.S. so we’re ready to scale coast-to-coast.
Read more @WSJ: wsj.com/business/alphabets-d….
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Eight public numbers from aerospace and physical AI this week:
1. Archer Midnight: FAA market survey certificate clears piloted flights in Los Angeles in the coming weeks. The Bay Area tour logged over 300 miles of piloted flights.
2. AutoFlight: 5 eVTOLs, one 5-ton and four 2-ton, flew in formation for 47 minutes with no manual input. The lead aircraft covered more than 133 km.
3. Shield AI Hivemind: 2 firsts for Air Force drone wingmen in 3 weeks. An F-22 pilot directed an FQ-44A, then multiple CCAs flew as one team.
4. Saab: £15M Royal Navy contract for Sea Giraffe 1X counter-drone radars on Kraken's autonomous K3 Scout boats.
5. AeroVironment: contract with a $940M ceiling and an initial award of about $315M for its autonomous systems unit. Customer not named.
6. Agile Robots: $500M Series F at an $8.5B valuation. Its plant near Munich can build up to 10,000 humanoids a year.
7. Blue Origin Northstar engine: 715,000 pounds of thrust, 30% less mass and 50% fewer parts than BE-4. More than 65% is 3D printed.
8. Rocket Lab: Neutron has 16 missions booked before its first launch. Total launch backlog is a record 117 launches.
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A heavier drone should cruise faster to use the least energy.
New paper, tested on two real multirotors: best cruise speed grows with the square root of mass (4x weight, 2x speed).
Loads change every delivery, so matching speed to load stretches range.
arxiv.org/abs/2611.04748
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Skyreach trades fuel for cargo inside one 100 lb budget: 1,300+ miles one way with 10 lb aboard, 280+ miles with 80 lb.
The engine also recharges the lift battery in flight, so there is no ground charging. How much charge must the battery hold back to land if the generator stops mid-route? xitter.gq/skyways/status/2119806…
ONE PLATFORM. INFINITE MISSIONS.
Meet Skyreach.
Built from our operational experience that spans 3,600+ flights, 90,000+ km flown, 8 years of military operations with current operations on three continents— Skyreach is built by the mission.
Deliver Anywhere. Deliver Far. Deliver Anything. Deliver Scale.
Airlift Anywhere Now.
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Two drones carrying one load on two ropes: if one drifts, one rope goes slack and the other drone takes all the weight.
A new paper lets the load slide on one rope between them, like a pulley. Each drone then holds an even share wherever they sit, and stays closer to even in simulated gusts.
arxiv.org/abs/2611.12754
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Wing now reaches tens of thousands of homes across the Memphis metro, with groceries and medicine in as fast as 30 minutes.
The flight is usually the quick part. How much of that 30 minutes is picking and packing the order before the drone leaves? xitter.gq/Wing/status/2120205888…
Today we expanded drone delivery to tens of thousands of homes across the Memphis metro. Local residents can now order groceries, medicine and household essentials delivered by air in as fast as 30 minutes.
Read more: wing.com/news/wing-brings-a-….
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A drone that folds to fit through a gap narrower than itself. No fold motors. The hit on the gap edge does the folding.
Arza, Alexis, Mintchev and team let an optimizer tune the frame and arm stiffness in sim. The prototype goes from 31.3 cm to 14.1 cm wide and flies through a 15 cm gap at 2 m/s.
In open air it costs under 1% extra power.
arxiv.org/abs/2611.09272
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Hivemind flew several Air Force drone wingmen as one team on Oct 26, three weeks after an F-22 pilot called maneuvers for an FQ-44A Fury.
The big claim is fly, update the software overnight, fly again. What gets re-tested before an overnight update is cleared to fly? xitter.gq/shieldaitech/status/21…
For the first time, Hivemind flew multiple @usairforce Collaborative Combat Aircraft as a coordinated team.
On October 26, Hivemind enabled multiple CCAs to execute a multi-ship formation and beyond-visual-range air combat tactics. Three weeks earlier, an F-22 pilot in flight sent commands to an FQ-44A Fury, and Hivemind executed the maneuvers the pilot called for. The pilot sets the plan, and Hivemind carries it out across the team.
"The combined Hivemind and aircraft software release process is nearing the point where the Air Force can fly a sortie, update the software overnight and fly again the next day," said Todd Wesley, our VP of Hivemind engineering.
Full article: bit.ly/4k8jH8z
Autonomy for the world. The greatest victory requires no war.
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Ice hits small, fast-spinning rotors harder than big wings.
Their thin blade edges sweep through cold cloud fast and catch more of the freezing droplets. In Iowa State icing-tunnel tests on a drone-size propeller, wet ice cut thrust by up to 70% and needed up to 250% more power to keep it spinning.
So for small electric rotors, cold cloud is a limit to plan around, not push through.
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Source: Liu, Li, Ning, Tian & Hu (Iowa State), "Experimental Investigation on the Dynamic Icing Process over a Rotating Propeller Model", AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power, 2018. arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.B…
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Which drone should you send to catch an intruder? Often not the nearest one, and not the fastest one.
Researchers at Federation University Australia and the University of Chittagong pick the interceptor by its true time to reach the target. That time counts turn radius, launch delay and no-fly zones.
In 20 simulated scenarios with 8 drones each, "send the nearest" picked the wrong drone 9 times. "Send the fastest" picked wrong 14 times.
arxiv.org/abs/2611.07279
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Engine light-off, nozzle integration and a weapons bay wind tunnel check are the ground steps. For a fighter built to skip the runway, the next proof is the first vertical takeoff. Will flight test start with a tethered hover or go straight to switching from hover to forward flight?
A year of X-BAT development, on the floor at International Fighter Conference.
Since we announced X-BAT last year, we've completed engine light off, thrust vectoring nozzle integration, and wind tunnel validation of the weapons bay, clearing the path to flight testing. Our team brought the latest development to @DefenceIQ's IFC 2026: X-BAT 001.
@rtsengusa revealed the first full-scale prototype of our autonomous VTOL strike fighter. Todd Wesley and Andrew Hawkes MSc covered how we build autonomy that commanders can trust and air power that doesn't rely on runways. More on X-BAT coming soon.
Autonomy for the world. The greatest victory requires no war.
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A drone that drops its own breadcrumbs when it starts to get lost.
In blank tunnels and white corridors, camera navigation drifts because there is nothing to track. A University of Naples team has the drone notice that, then drop pebbles or dab a wall with a sponge to make new landmarks.
In real corridor flights, position error fell about 35%.
arxiv.org/abs/2611.07687
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Electra estimates about 3 hours 30 minutes saved versus driving between New York and Washington, D.C.
The useful Ultra Short test is that door-to-door time, from a Manhattan heliport instead of a runway airport.
A fixed-wing aircraft taking off and landing at a Manhattan heliport.
That's what Life Beyond Runways looks like.
Thank you to @NBCNewYork for covering Electra's recent demonstration at Downtown Skyport and highlighting the potential for Ultra Short aircraft to transform regional connectivity.
#Electra #DirectAviation #LifeBeyondRunways
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ETH Zurich's FlexiQuad bends on a hit instead of breaking.
A soft ring frame flexes sideways, stays stiff for thrust, and kept flying after lab collisions at about 25 km/h. Top speed is up to 80 km/h. Patent filed.
Useful for inspection and rescue in clutter, where the first bump usually ends the flight.
ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/e…
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