Sky Surfer Aircraft - Hunter Kowald's custom built Skysurfer Hoverbird already hit the social media scene a few months ago, but his latest stunt has everyone talking again. How secure can this device be? Well, even if two of its engines or one of its five power systems fail, it can still land safely. It has a payload capacity of about 500 pounds and can be flown by an average adult for up to 20 minutes.
Are you interested? The Skysurfer hoverboard will be available for sale soon, priced at $20,000 USD. It is made of industrial-grade materials and plenty of carbon fiber to keep things very durable. For added safety, it also has FAA flight guidance lighting for night flights.
Sky Surfer Aircraft
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I spent years doing this, at least to do it safely and correctly. There is a lot of safety built into the device, so basically I can have two motors fail and still land safely. We checked with the police and everything is fine to put on a little show. We had permission and we asked for it in advance and everyone was around to make sure we did it right,” Kowald said. Kowald designed and built the Skysurfer aircraft. This is his story.
Hunter Kovald is a name you may not recognize but probably will soon, thanks to his giant drone-like vehicle, The Skysurfer. The young engineer grew up with a dream shared by many, but ultimately dismissed as impossible: to fly freely through the air like in some futuristic movie or video game.
But as evidenced by his many viral videos on social media, of a helmeted man soaring on a real hoverboard in New York City or Venice Beach, Kowald has made that dream come true. Below, Kowald shares what it's like to design, develop, and ultimately fly his amazing private jet.
I was nine years old in the backseat of my parents' car when I first started painting some sort of hoverboard. I still have the drawings. My father had a pilot's license and flew with him when I was young. The idea was always somewhere in the back of my mind and I think I always had a passion for flying. Later, when I studied mechanical engineering and mathematics, then worked in design in the industrial world, the idea of building something like that became more real.
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I definitely started the process in 2017, spending an incredible amount of time working on paper and crunching all the numbers. I want to build an ultralight aircraft powerful enough to carry one person through the sky. I went through everything a million times before trying to convert these calculations into actual results. I knew I had only one chance to get the prototype right.
For some important parts like the frame and screws, there was nothing close to what I needed on the market. The only option is to design it yourself. I had no idea how long this process would take when I first started, or I probably wouldn't have started in the first place. I got in too deep and at a certain point the only option I had was to let this happen. I sometimes waited months for pieces to be produced internationally and shipped to me.
When the parts arrive, the next step is a rigorous testing process that puts them through an incredible amount of cycles. It was necessary for me not only to perform well, but also to perform well by emphasizing a good weight. For aircraft safety, you are always making sure that you can operate at 150 percent of the maximum expected load. I was looking for a frame to carry 500 pounds, so I tested it with 750 pounds.
In this endless routine I design, make, break and redesign. Once I was calibrating, the ship took full power straight into the wind. I found that small amounts of dew accumulated on the ride in and out would cause the electronics to fail.
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I then built Failover and Revive, but it was a bit of a wake-up call to make sure everything was OK before I stepped on it. My design is much smaller than what people have tried or thought before, which creates tremendous heat. I had to make it fireproof, because I was wasting 10 houses of energy in flight.
The first time I stood on stage I was acutely aware of all the craziness going on below me. Propellers rotate faster than the speed of sound and can compensate for external forces. There is a ton of noise and vibration in the first four feet off the ground. The energy of the earth returns to you and the movements are aggressive.
As soon as I got more than four feet off the ground, the experience of flying changed dramatically. I remember that flight very well. I felt steady. The motion was very smooth and the turbines were silent. The feeling was incredible and I felt confident about riding anything on the planet. Then I knew it really worked.
Every time I fly I get better at it and more aggressive. I feel like I have a good balance because I was on a competitive snowboard team. The best way to describe my feeling is that it's like snowboarding and parachuting in a wind tunnel. I face all this wind in the air and every movement I make outside of my platform affects the flight.
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I'm thinking about four or five different things while flying. The hand controls are very complex and have all kinds of sensors built in. But the more I fly, the more I use it, the less I think about every detail. It starts running or driving in the sense that it is more and more like second nature. I see where I want to go and I fly there.
There is a lot of industrial space in Los Angeles where most of the first flights took place. People were generally pretty cool about it, except for the occasional security guard who was a bit tired of the glider flying around on his patrol. They usually tried to get me somewhere else nearby. I now fly all the time, over all kinds of terrain.
Cities are probably easier, as there is pavement to take off from, but you have to be aware of buildings as the wind blows them around. My favorite place to fly is the desert, there's something psychologically appealing about having a bit of soft ground below while you're in the air. And it looks cool. I have to make sure that sand and dirt kicks up from damaging the screws.
That's where I recently broke my personal height record in the sand dunes of San Diego. First I flew 60 feet and recently I beat it significantly, I'm sure I was 100 feet. It's hard to know for sure, because it takes some calculation. But I'm surprised at how comfortable I am. I used to be careful getting off the ground, now I just hit the controls and I'm 50 feet in the air.
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I've never worried about heights and for whatever reason I feel particularly comfortable on the Skysurfer. I know how much time I've spent with figures before and I built them up very carefully. I'm certainly not always a safe person, but it seems like a good idea to have a helmet for protection and a heavy jacket to keep out the weather.
The funny thing about wearing a helmet is that no one really knows me, they know Skysurfer. I get a lot of attention when I fly in the suburbs or in the city. I didn't expect it to go viral so quickly, I had some friends from a jet pack company and I posted a little airplane I made and it got millions of views. Shooting footage while I fly is fun because of the feedback
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