Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Brandon Robinson: Eventually, people realize that gas still has, like, 30 times the energy density of even the best batteries.
And we can do cool things like recharge the aircraft after takeoff, recharge the aircraft after landing. And there's a lot of operational versatility. So kind of an operational tough version of a VTOL is what we went after.
[00:00:22] Intro: Welcome to Hangar X Studios, where former fighter pilot and host John Ramstead takes us on a journey across aerospace as it enters an historic period of innovation and transformation.
Our guests include aviation experts, pilots, financiers, military leaders, and innovators of all types.
Buckle up for another episode of Hangar X.
John Ramstead: Hey, welcome to the Hangar X Studios podcast. And we are live here at Verticon, and we're inter. And we're interviewing some of the most fascinating thought leaders and doers and innovators that are that are here at Verticon. And today we have on Brandon Robinson. Brandon, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:07] Brandon Robinson: Hey, thanks very much. Appreciate being here.
[00:01:08] John Ramstead: Yeah, we just found out you're a Canadian Hornet pilot, and I was a Navy Tomcat pilot, so we have some things in common and people we know.
[00:01:16] Brandon Robinson: And too bad we didn't get to mix it up. That have been pretty fun.
[00:01:19] John Ramstead: That would have been pretty fun. I never lost to an F18.
[00:01:22] Brandon Robinson: Oh, really?
[00:01:22] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:01:23] Brandon Robinson: Well, that's not a fought one then.
[00:01:24] John Ramstead: That's my. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
One of the guys on our team, Salim Fleur, MiG21s in the Indian Air Force. Oh, awesome. Could you imagine flying that beast?
[00:01:34] Brandon Robinson: I would have loved to have flown it.
[00:01:36] John Ramstead: Wouldn't that be fun? I also wanted to fly The Phantom, the F4. I never got to fly. That was one thing I just wanted to fly.
[00:01:41] Brandon Robinson: But I got a buddy, Chocolate, that's flown a MiG minus 21.
[00:01:43] John Ramstead: I think that'd be pretty cool.
[00:01:44] Brandon Robinson: Yeah.
[00:01:45] John Ramstead: Yeah. Okay, now you're with Horizon Aircraft. So tell us about Horizon Aircraft.
[00:01:49] Brandon Robinson: Yeah. So Horizon Aircraft is a new EVTOL OEM. We got about 30 to 40 folks on board right now, and we are building a hybrid electric vtol.
So four years ago, that wasn't so popular to have this gas on board, but eventually people realized that gas still has, like, 30 times the energy density of even the best batteries.
And we can do cool things like recharge the aircraft after takeoff, recharge the aircraft after landing, and there's a lot of operational versatility. So kind of an operational tough version of a VTOL is what we went after.
[00:02:21] John Ramstead: Yeah. And tell me a little bit about, you know, the EVTOL space, the air taxi space really got a lot of press and a lot of attention and you know, the SPAC craze, there was a lot of funding that went into that space and I kind of see that, you know, you know, we're right next to, you know, Joby and some of the other EVTOLs, their, their use cases.
Fairly limited range.
[00:02:41] Brandon Robinson: I agree.
[00:02:42] John Ramstead: So tell us a little bit about Horizon and kind of what your vision was and what, what part of the market you guys are trying to fit into.
[00:02:47] Brandon Robinson: Yeah, so great question.
During that craze, a bunch of investors came to us and said, listen, I know you guys are a great design agency. You're going to. We would like a concept for an evtol all electric. And we said, okay, let's take a look at this. I'm skeptical about the operational versatility and you know, using these things in the wild, being, you know, coming from a cockpit and being a lot of sticky situations myself.
So the first thing we did is took a really hard look at the market and distilled some specifications. You know, what would this machine have to do? Range, speed, payload.
We envisioned a lot of operational considerations, landing in austere operating locations, maybe vertiport infrastructure that would not be developed as quickly as it could be.
And we pretty quickly coalesced on a very interesting concept. But it was hybrid electric. Right. So again, recharge itself after takeoff, it can land in austere operating locations. As long as there's fuel somewhere, it can recharge itself.
And so we presented the concept about four years ago, five years ago actually now, and they loved it. They thought there was a big market gap in forming, wherein you're right, all those electric machines would be confined to sort of 50 to 75 kilometers. We would do the, you know, 500 to 750 kilometer range. So between cities instead of just within the cities.
[00:04:03] John Ramstead: Yeah. And what's, what's the specs of the aircraft once it's flying?
[00:04:08] Brandon Robinson: Okay, so we'll do knots. So it's a 250 knot dash. It'll cruise in the low two hundreds.
[00:04:13] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:04:13] Brandon Robinson: It has about a hundred, 1500 pound useful load. So subtract some fuel for payload.
[00:04:18] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:04:19] Brandon Robinson: Six passengers, one pilot up front. Big enough cockpit or sorry, cabin to fit a medevac crew and all the equipment. Yeah, it's got about 100, 150 kilowatts of generation power on board from, from an onboard hybrid system. So you can run lots of cool payload stuff on the military side. That's pretty Interesting.
Yeah. So that's what kind of, what's the.
[00:04:37] John Ramstead: What'S the propulsion system you guys went with?
[00:04:39] Brandon Robinson: So we're, we're down selecting on last couple. Okay. But like a Pratt and Wendy PT6 style, 750 horsepower class with again about 100, 150 kilowatts of generation power up front.
[00:04:49] John Ramstead: Yep. Because we've had vertig on and ascendance on and we were talking about.
Yeah. With their hybrid solutions, there's, there's some great advancements happening there.
[00:05:00] Brandon Robinson: There really is. And it makes a lot of sense. Again it. We have bleed air on board so we can keep people warm, we can have de icing capabilities.
So we're trying to build that tough machine that can go into, you know, flight into known icing is what we're targeting.
[00:05:11] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:05:12] Brandon Robinson: Full IFR capable machine.
[00:05:13] John Ramstead: Yep.
[00:05:14] Brandon Robinson: You do the transition to and from.
[00:05:16] John Ramstead: What altitude do you think you'll be able to go to?
[00:05:18] Brandon Robinson: So what, 18, 20 able to go to. And then what we are going to go to are two different things. We're going to keep it below 10,000ft. It's unpressurized.
[00:05:24] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:05:25] Brandon Robinson: But the service ceiling will be much higher than that.
[00:05:27] John Ramstead: Okay. What does the outlook look for you guys? What are you seeing as far as the market response?
[00:05:33] Brandon Robinson: Yeah. So let's back up four years and the market, you know, was like, okay, these guys are developing this hybrid. It's not going to be as sustainable.
But then, you know, Fast forward to 2025 when all the realities of the pure electric machines and trying to operate them and get them certified and the, you know, the nature of the battery tech, not maybe, you know, hockey sticking, it's just been sort of constant 4 to 6% increase over the years.
And people are really looking hard at the hybrid example.
[00:05:59] John Ramstead: Right.
[00:05:59] Brandon Robinson: Archers doing the hybrid for the US military and they're just seeing a lot more operational flexibility and the operators want a machine that can basically make the money. Right. So if these things can be bought and can be used in the wild profitably, then they're going to sell, they're going to be widely proliferated and we'll have a more sustainable sort of future.
[00:06:17] John Ramstead: Well, yeah. When the US Air Force with AFWorks came out and said electrification doesn't fit our mission parameters, it's got to be hybrid or traditional.
[00:06:26] Brandon Robinson: Well, correct. And actually we won't high speed VTOL award early on that helped.
Okay. Helped us rapidly develop the 50% scale aircraft. Yeah.
[00:06:36] John Ramstead: That must have been a fun partnership.
[00:06:38] Brandon Robinson: Oh, that was great.
[00:06:39] John Ramstead: I mean they're the best general partner ever because they help you with the capital and they don't want equity.
[00:06:44] Brandon Robinson: It's amazing. Actually. We had a bunch of, you know, the team is great. They came up to the hangar, we had some special forces guys that came up and we're just drooling over the.
Over the airplane they wanted. Oh, they saw the 50% scale prototype. We fold the wings forward and it fits in a trailer. And the SOCOM folks were like, can we have one of those right now.
[00:07:03] John Ramstead: This is the Cavorite X7, right?
[00:07:05] Brandon Robinson: This was the 50% scale prototype of the X7. Yeah. But now we're on the full scale aircraft design and build. So if you walked in the hangar, you'd see full scale propulsion units spinning up and actuators going and it's a pretty exciting time.
[00:07:18] John Ramstead: Okay, so this X7, what do you think the appeal is for? You know what, what is the problem? This is solving for that mission planner inside of the military.
[00:07:27] Brandon Robinson: Inside the military. Essentially we're building a helicopter that can go twice as fast and is much cheaper to own and operate, right?
[00:07:34] John Ramstead: Yep.
[00:07:35] Brandon Robinson: So it travels at speeds Again, up to 250 knots. Again, that's pretty fast.
[00:07:38] John Ramstead: Versus 130 to 150.
[00:07:40] Brandon Robinson: Exactly. Right? Yeah. So you have a helicopter with a lower noise sign.
It goes twice as fast. And so you just think of all the missions. Casavec, you know, soft infill, X fill, ISR, ISR, all sorts of stuff again. Yeah. With a 150 kilowatt generation capability, that opens up a lot of payload options for surveillance, you know as well as I do.
[00:07:59] John Ramstead: Yep.
[00:07:59] Brandon Robinson: So a lot of really cool missions.
[00:08:01] John Ramstead: Yeah, that's exciting. So what's, what does certification look like for you guys? What do you think where you are on that timeline?
[00:08:07] Brandon Robinson: So we've already had initial informal conversations with Transport Canada.
We have a gentleman on the board named John Maris. He formed a company called Certification Center Canada.
Search Center Canada is basically a private company that cherry picked all the best certification folks from the public realm and put them in a really awesome company. They specialize in building certification plans, certifying new aircraft designs. They built us a really excellent sort of roadmap that we're working through right now.
[00:08:33] John Ramstead: Yeah. So what's the next big milestone for you guys to hit? Like, what are you looking at here in 25?
[00:08:38] Brandon Robinson: Well, a couple. So we've gone all the way through the flight test program on the half scale prototype, which is great. With the exception of manned or unmanned, it's nonmanned aircraft. 22 foot wingspan, 15ft long. It's a pretty big machine.
[00:08:49] John Ramstead: So you got a lot of good.
[00:08:50] Brandon Robinson: Data, A lot of really good data, enough to prove out the technology to our satisfaction. And now we're. The second cool thing we're doing is building the full scale aircraft.
[00:08:58] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:08:58] Brandon Robinson: So we're going to prove out the full scale propulsion units that they can produce enough thrust that they can stay cool enough.
And yeah, we have a full scale aircraft coming together this year, which is amazing.
[00:09:11] John Ramstead: Wow, that's exciting. Where do you guys do this out of? Where are you?
[00:09:13] Brandon Robinson: Just north of Toronto.
[00:09:14] John Ramstead: Okay. So when that's flying, I'd love for. I'd love to come up, film it. Let's do an episode.
[00:09:20] Brandon Robinson: Oh, we'd love to.
[00:09:21] John Ramstead: Yeah, let's, let's definitely stay in touch, you know, if you got. Every time you hit a milestone, let us know. Let's bring it back on the podcast and let's just share your progress. We all need to celebrate each other's wins in this, this world is, you know, there's going to be companies that just break out and set a new standard, so.
[00:09:35] Brandon Robinson: Oh, and I love what you guys do here, giving the vertical community a voice and just can't just really appreciate it. So thank you. Yeah. And you're welcome anytime. Just give me a shout, I will come up.
[00:09:42] John Ramstead: All right. Brandon. Hey, great to meet you.
[00:09:44] Brandon Robinson: Yeah, great to meet you too. Okay, thanks.
[00:09:46] John Ramstead: All right, see you.
[00:09:46] Brandon Robinson: See ya.
