Popular Mechanics is looking for ideas about where aviation will go in the next 20 years. New technologies are going to become available that could finally make possible the widespread introduction of Personal Air Vehicles, or PAVs. These would be inexpensive, mass-produced aircraft that, thanks to advances in intelligent controls and avionics, would be as inexpensive and easy to fly as a car, making autonomous air travel available to the general public.

What will these PAVs look like? Popular Mechanics has decided to ask X-Plane!

The magazine is asking Austin and his band of customers if they can use X-Plane to predict where aviation will be in 20 years by entering futuristic designs and seeing how they fly. By simulating what we can't build yet. By planning what is soon to be built!

Among the technologies that the magazine thinks might become available by 2016:

— Morphing wings, including variable sweep, variable-dihedral, variable-incidence, and wing-retraction (a new feature in the Plane-Maker airfoils screen).

— high efficiency reciprocating and jet engines.

— nearly automatic planes with "highway-in-the-sky" systems, where you really only need a throttle and stick and maybe flaps and a simple interface to enter your destination and you can easily fly the plane through hoops to get where you are going in any weather.

Here is the challenge: Design an airplane in X-Plane 8.32 to take advantage of these technologies. Design the coolest, fastest, longest-range, best-handling 2-place personal-flyer you can, and email the aircraft pack to me (zip-file to austin@x-plane.com with a note on the power-setting and altitude you want me to fly it at) BY FEBRUARY 28 for judging. Feel free to do your submission earlier and I will give you feedback (IF I have time!) so you can improve your design and re-submit before the deadline.

OK, here are the specs:

The plane must have room for 2 people.
The empty weight must be 750 pounds.
The fuel must be 150 pounds.
The gross weight must be 1300 pounds. This leaves 400 pounds for payload.

The plane may have:
a single turboprop engine of 125 hp with an SFC of 0.45 (Specific Fuel Consumption)
or
a single hi-bypass jet engine with 450 lb of thrust and an SFC of 0.45.
or
a single lo-bypass jet engine with 450 lb of thrust and an SFC of 0.70.

The jet engine compressor area must be 1 square foot, and have a max inlet mach number of 0.8.

Engines may be turbo-normalized to any altitude.

The fuselage should have a Cd of 0.04 if it is aerodynamic and teardrop-shaped, higher otherwise.
You must use default, un-modified airfoils that come with X-Plane.
You must use the default flap-coefficients for whatever flap-type you specify.
The airplane must fit inside a 25' x 25' x 10' garage or hangar.

The plane must take off in 500 feet or less, and may NOT fly above 24,000 feet to achieve it's score... we DON'T want these things smacking Airbus A-380's with 900 mph closure speed!

The score will be as follows:

When flying at MAX weight (1,300 pounds), and taking off in 500 feet or less, and climbing to 24,000 feet or less, the score is the CRUISE SPEED IN MILES PER HOUR TIMES THE RANGE of the plane in statue miles, where you specify what altitude and cruise power setting to use when you submit the plane to me, so that I fly the plane the way you want me to so I can fly your best-possible score.

I have already done a few preliminary designs, and have achieved scores of about 280,000. Can you do better?

GET TO WORK IN PLANE-MAKER AND MAKE YOUR IDEAL PLANE OF THE FUTURE AND EMAIL IT TO ME! YOUR DESIGN COULD MAKE THE COVER OF POPULAR MECHANICS IF YOURS IS THE BEST!

austin

austin@x-plane.com