Wheel the box out of the hangar for the first time, resplendent in Post Office Red.
It doesn't look quite as much yet like the classic K8 design of old, but will do once I've added the base and dome beside the trim around the window-frames.
It's also light, but as ever, not as light as I'd like... but that's aircraft for you.
Building has, as ever, been the inspiration for each conceptual step and putting this together at these dimensions (eventually 1500 x 500 x 500 mm all told) I realised that (a) it can seat an adult like a wing-chair bu also (b) it might also fly a child stood upright.
Effectively therefore it's a 66% scale working prototype that may yet fly a child-sized dummy and which might also form the basis for a booth around two foot square and six foot six tall equipped with larger motors and 36- or 40-inch propellers.
With a minor stood inside, too, there remains the option to fit one quad at the base and one at the top, as originally envisaged in the draft application for the GoFly Challenge.
Nonetheless we shall run with the modular octo-copter up top for the time being, as it makes the control-laws more straightforward beside parking the propellers in the safest location.
Rotors have always been up there on the helicopter and it is no surprise that the Volocopter has followed suit. Bear in mind its prototype ~ not that long ago ~ featured a pilot sat upon an exercise ball surrounded by a forest of rotors.
What they have produced now looks the part, and looking the part is essential for selling the concept of urban air mobility (UAM) to the public.
I wondered today whether Mercedes and Audi raced in silver because of a reluctance to add much on the way of paint to alloy bodywork for fear of adding weight. As it is I've let five tins of spray-paint loose on this airframe because it has to make a point:
Where once you'd have phoned from here, you'll now be teleported instead.
