Stephen Caruthers
Colorado Springs, CO (USA)
Role(s):
Founder/Owner/Principal
Airbat Helicopter Corporation
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Startup
Location:
Colorado Springs
Industry:
Other
Year Founded:
2018
Number Employees:
1-10 people
Business Stage:
Growth (not profitable)
Entity Type:
"C" Corporation
Description:
Helicopters that are produced today perform a lot of great services for people, but they have also enjoyed limited use as they are very difficult to fly, expensive to operate and maintain, are basically unstable in flight, are complicated with a lot of moving parts, are noisy and not very efficient. These inherent problems in the current design, leave an opportunity to improve upon their basic design to eliminate, or minimize, these problems.
We designed, engineered, built and flew a prototype Air Pressure Jet (APJ) Rotor Helicopter, in 1981, that eliminates or minimizes the problems listed above. You can see a picture of it and a more detailed explanation on our web site (URL removed), but it is torque-less, has no tail rotor, and is much easier to fly and maintain than a conventional helicopter as it has about 85% fewer moving parts. It is actually fun to fly. Unfortunately, we were forced to abandon that project in 1985 as we could not find a suitable Power Unit. Now, there is a suitable Power Unit, actually there are two, so we have organized a new company, Airbat Helicopter Corporation, to recondition our prototype and make it airworthy so we can then finish the development of our prototype and put it into production initially as a kit.