By Gia Keiper, EAA 1411114
My name is Gia Keiper. The article that Christina Basken wrote about the GoFly competition has been an amazing inspiration to me, and has really had an influence on me.
I’m 14 years old, and I live in California. I’ve always been interested in airplanes but we have no flying history in our family. Five years ago, my brother Taris (he’s 16 years old now) learned about the EAA workshops and convinced my dad to take the EAA composites class with him at Aircraft Spruce & Specialty. I was too young at the time and massively mad that I couldn’t go with them. My dad and my brother became EAA members at the time, so we started receiving EAA Sport Aviation. I read every issue cover to cover but flying myself or owning an airplane was just a distant dream.
Then in 2019 we had the chance to fly tandem hang gliders in Italy. That was the first time I left Earth’s surface on anything smaller than a commercial airliner. My tandem pilot let me steer the glider, and I just wanted to fly on forever.
Then late last year I read Christina’s article in Sport Aviation about the GoFly competition. Those concepts were interesting, but I had already spent a lot of time studying aerodynamics (for a wind tunnel), hover efficiency (for a jetpack that we canceled for safety reasons), and a few other related subjects and I thought I might know why none of the concepts had come close to achieving the goals of the competition, and that my brother and I might even be able to design a more successful solution. We have designed and built other engineering projects before, so the idea was not completely crazy — just a little bit.
Since our hang glider flights, we had been talking about an electric tailsitter VTOL with a pilot in prone position, partially because that looks like a more efficient (and fun) solution compared to the Opener Blackfly that Beth E. Stanton had written about earlier. But Christina’s GoFly article has turned that idea from occasional brainstorming into an all-consuming project. Ever since, we have been working on the research and design of such an aircraft every available minute. We did much of the CAD work and all of the CFD in SOLIDWORKS that we got through EAA.
This year was the first time ever that we were in Oshkosh, but we’ll be back in 360 days, maybe even with a small booth because our concept Volpire GoFly is ready, after a final 30-hour nonstop shift right before Oshkosh!
The SOLIDWORKS CFD simulation is convinced that the Volpire will fly well, and in a few weeks, we should have the first 50 percent scale flying prototype to verify that! The idea of flying this machine is captivating and eVTOL is a huge part of the aviation future (also something that I first realized through Sport Aviation). If readers are interested in learning more, they can have a look at the project at VertiLectric.com.
Right now, I’m trying to find out how to get the pilot certificate for powered lift aircraft that I’ll need to fly the Volpire. A drone certificate works for the scale model and the remote-control prototypes, but later we’ll fly them manned, and it looks pretty complicated to get such a certificate if you’re not flying Ospreys as a day job.