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You wake up on a Wednesday morning in Santa Monica, CA. The weather is good. You have a busy day ahead of you: a customer visit at your office in San Bernardino, invited by a supplier for lunch in Santa Barbara, a preliminary meeting in San Diego and this evening you may be able to take in the Padres game too.
After the usual morning routine you kiss the family goodbye at 7.50 am and enter your PAL-V which is parked in front of the house. On the way to the airstrip, you drive past a gas station and buy 10 gallons of diesel for your (Mazda) diesel engine. You call the airport from the PAL-V, get a slot for take-off and clearance to drive onto the take-off area. The small costs are added to your account. The call takes 2 minutes. You park the PAL-V on the designated spot for short take-off runs at 8.15 am, press on the Transformer button and the PAL-V extends its folded rotor and propeller and its tail. You inspect the in gyro-mode, go through a short checklist and everything is set for take-off.
You get back in to the PAL-V and 5 minutes after arrival at the airstrip, you are airborne. At 1000 ft altitude you head due east towards San Bernardino. As the weather is great you have a good overview of the surrounding area. You feel especially great because thousands of cars below you are bumper to bumper on the roads.
You stay away from inner city areas, from military areas and from airports. From the air, you put an (automatically dialed) call ahead to a small airstrip in San Bernardino, conveniently located for the office. You fly the 70 miles in under an hour and after landing, you are greeted by ground crew, who are somewhat surprised as you fold your gyrocopter to a small car!
You drive your PAL-V past the cashier’s office and pay the $12 landing fees (including return take-off) with your company credit card and ask for clearance to enter the airfield, and a designated take off spot, after your meeting. You make it to your meeting by 9.15, within ninety minutes of leaving home.
As you have had no stress in traffic, you feel fresh and ready to go. After a successful meeting you strike a quick deal and drive back to the airstrip, enter the area with a code and drive to the designated spot. There you unfold to gyro-mode, do the check round and take-off bound for Santa Barbara at 11.50.
Lunch is at 13:30 at La Cumbre Country Club in Santa Barbara and you arrive promptly, to find your supplier waiting for you in the lobby. After a positive meeting over lunch, and refusing offers of a glass of wine as you will be flying again soon, you bid farewell to your supplier and head back to the airport. Airborne within ten minutes of arrival, you head south for San Diego, and your final meeting of the day. It’s over a hundred miles, but your PAL-V covers the ground in less than ninety minutes.
Your preliminary meeting goes well, and it emerges that the potential new client is a Padres fanatic, who bemoans the fact that he must miss tonight’s ball game and leave to be in LA for a meeting at a subsidiary tomorrow.
You excuse yourself and call your friend at the big telecoms company who had offered you tickets for the game. He still has 2 available and you invite your customer to join you, offering him the backseat of your PAL-V up to LA afterwards.
Driving out to Petco Park, you book a take off slot for later that evening and arrange ground transportation for your passenger from the airport in Santa Monica. The Padres win in the tenth, for the perfect evening, and you and your soon-to-be client debate the Padres chances for the season. As you leave the ballpark, you quickly re-book a take off slot, as you are running later than planned.
At the airport, you run through your final set of pre-flight checks of the day, and briefly explain the take off procedures to your passenger. Nervous before take off, he quickly relaxes once the smoothness and stability of the PAL-V in flight becomes apparent, and excitedly points out the lights of landmarks in the darkness below. On landing in Santa Monica, you go your separate ways with a deal to take in another Padres game soon. It was a busy but successful and fun day. Tomorrow it’s over to Vegas for a management course. Another day that the SUV stays in the garage…
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These solves two things for the sceptics of
1. Flying car engines
2. Diesel flying trikes or in this case microlights
