M400 Flight Test Plans

Presently all test flights of the M400 Skycar employ a safety tether from above to protect the vehicle from catastrophic failure. Certainly during these early tests there are a number of failure modes with an aircraft that has 24 microprocessors and 25,000 lines of machine language software code. Additional factors that make a tether mandatory include:

• We are test flying within the Davis City Limits
• We presently have only one M400 aircraft
• Our insurance will go up substantially when the tether is not used while flying over land

We plan to begin untethered flights when we have at least one additional M400 nearing completion. All flights will occur over a specially constructed lake. This lake is part of the Milk Farm development, a commercial 60-acre development underway near the city of Dixon in California on Interstate 80. The lake will have an area of 5 to 6 acres and will be approximately 10 feet deep with a silt, rock free bottom. Most flights will occur at less than 50 feet altitude and will incorporate flotation gear attached to the Skycar.