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Certification of Vertical Take Off Vehicle

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Wayne

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 14, 2013
Messages
504
Location
Chicago, IL
Folks -
One of the young ladies who came up through my EAA Chapter, and who used to hang out at the maintenance shop here on the weekends, has gone to a major university to pursue Aeronautical Engineering. I'm super proud of her because she liked being "hands on" as she felt it would help her design equipment that people could actually "work on" versus being beautifully engineered but not practical....

As an early project she and her team are working on building a vehicle that will weigh about 210 pounds when completed, and is a prototype for a man carrying vehicle, but won't carry humans as it is a concept at this time.

She asked me how they would go about registering such a vehicle and that's where I got stuck. My first thought was that it would be an ultralight, but since it's not carrying people that means it would probably fall into the "drone" category. That means it would need to be registered with the FAA as a drone since it is over 55 pounds. Is that all we are talking about here, or perhaps I'm missing something obvious?

Thanks for any insight.

Wayne
 
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