Vision Update

Pat & Dennis Bender Experimental Aircraft Development Fund

 

J. Dennis Bender

Office, Home & Cell Phone: 859-391-5226

5726 La Jolla Blvd. – Suite 311

La Jolla, CA 92037-7345

&

Office - 100 Riverside Pl. - Suite 303

Covington, KY 41011-5711

 

We support experimental-aircraft development and applications for EMS, under-served-rural-communities, native-Americans, border-patrol, forestry-management, educational purposes, etc. (After initially incorporating in KY to form a single 501(c)(3), we dissolved that entity for a simplified form creating two entirely self-financed, private philanthropies. A Vanguard National Trust account has been setup for each making annual-grants for specific experimental-aviation-related projects in conjunction with the Experimental Aircraft Assoc. Foundation [EAA] in Oshkosh, WI., the eVTOL organization, San Diego Air & Space Museum and similar organizations. Elizabeth Dunn is my Estate Executor.

 

 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

www.JDBender.com – Pat & Dennis Bender eVTOL Experimental Aviation Fund (Vanguard National Trust)

www.JDBender.org – Pat & Dennis Bender Dementia Diagnosis Fund (Vanguard National Trust)

 

June 20, 2024

 

“What we have here is a failure to communicate!”

Ken’s family is my perfect target-market-surrogate, with his two daughters spanning our target of birth-to-college and hope to get more females interested in aviation.

Here I am sitting in front of my friend and advisor’s beautiful home situated behind my Bird Rock (La Jolla, CA) condo and owned by my new Estate Executor, with her primo-view of the sunset, that I so much enjoy daily. Hopefully I’m not yet too rapidly approaching seeing my own final sunset. Ken’s newborn represents the future of aviation, especially if we can get them interested at an early age.

That is the whole focus of my eVTOL project with the San Diego Air & Space Museum. The trick is to give an actual flight experience after visiting such a Museum and before taking an EAA Young Eagles first flight at Brown Field. (I am a Lifetime EAA member having previously spent 48-weeks at the annual Oshkosh gathering, staying in the U. of Wisc. dorms and now instead attending the virtual eVTOL conference held each weekend before that annual get-together.)

The phrase "What we have here is a failure to communicate!" is one of the most famous lines from the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, which stars Paul Newman as the rebellious inmate Luke Jackson. (The line is spoken by the character Captain (played by Strother Martin), who is the warden of the prison-camp where Luke is held. That line is delivered during a pivotal scene in the film. After Luke attempts to escape from the prison camp and is recaptured, the Captain gives a speech to Luke and the other inmates. The Captain says, “What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So, you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. And I don't like it any more than you men.”)

The Captain’s statement highlights the ongoing conflict between Luke and the prison-authorities. It underscores the breakdown in understanding and communication between the rebellious prisoner and the authoritarian system trying to control him. The line has since become emblematic of any situation where there is a significant communication breakdown, such as we have here with the insurance companies at the S.D. Air & Space Museum. We need to fix that problem with a little more education regarding the actual facts of this situation. (The American Film Institute included this quote in their list of the top 100 movie quotes in American cinema.) That line "What we have here is a failure to communicate!" remains one of the most-memorable and enduring aspects of the film and exactly the nature of the problem I am having with the SD Air & Space Museum insurers.

Here is what is wrong with just having simulators that I plan to fix! They don’t provide the visceral-feel of actual flight! My eVTOL project will solve that and do it safely, hopefully motivating more youth and others to further investigate flying and associated activities.

[50-years ago, having had to terminate the pregnancy of our baby girl due to a severe birth defect at 6-months and the death of our son Bryan 4-hours following his birth, I instead now have two local Bird Rock longtime residents and friends who are my ersatz adopted kid replacements; namely Craig Bender & Elizabeth Dunn, along with two ersatz adopted Uncles; Ken Chalmers over at Bird Rock Fine Wines and John Kasper at our block’s Pedego dealership, thus creating my extended synthetic Bird Rock family! With that background, I’ve been especially interested in generating interest in young folks in aviation and believe I have developed a promising method as described below.]

Skiing is a perfect analogy for describing my current situation. I’m at the top of a new Colorado mountain with no trail-map, nor any trial-difficulty markings, the immediate path ahead looks OK but after that it disappears into a cloudbank. Whether it will be a smooth intermediate-slope all the way to the obvious final destination or a difficult rocky-run remains to be seen.

My Many Designed-In Safety Features

1.    Roll-cage designed to protect pilot who is in a 4-point harness and in an aviation helmet with two-way communication.
2.    4 large springs to be attached to the undercarriage allowing it to just bounce if suddenly drops.
3.    Geofenced into the area around the SD Air & Space Museum Annex
4.    Lidar auto-landing if all else fails that finds a clear space to land on the Museum property.
5.    Altitude limit can be set to as low as wanted, say 10-ft. AGL or whatever y’all want.
6.    Big-red-panic-button so student can force immediate auto-landing.
7.    Fly-by-wire dual-controls with instructor able to over-ride the student if they go out of control.
8.    Able to fly with as many as 3 simultaneous motor failures, which likely will never happen.
9.        Numerous other similar eVTOL commercial operations already operating with insurance, such as my own on-order RYE-Recon and numerous others I’ve documented in “Plan-B”
10.   Tethers attached to the ground would prevent it from flying-away or even tipping-over, if everything else fails!

"Plan-C" Vision Update

Backgrounder

 

Here is a backgrounder for this Solstice’s celebration and my "Plan-C" update. 

 

Every Solstice, I celebrate it with a review of where we stand with respect to the 20% of my annual R&D research funding going towards getting youth and others interested in experimental aviation. (See my last discussion in "Plan-B" at the last Solstice get together and posted on my website: www.JDBender.com . )

Home - Pat & Dennis Bender Experimental-Aircraft Development Fund Pat & Dennis Bender Experimental-Aircraft Development Fund. We support experimental-aircraft development and applications for EMS, under-served-rural-communities, etc.



My last Solstice meeting (see: “Plan-B” at my website www.JDBender.com ) was with the folks at our National Air & Space Museum in Dayton OH taking a look at their superb flight-simulator setup. This Solstice celebration dinner at Nine-Ten, here in La Jolla, is an opportunity to discuss another update with yet another revised draft, now titled: "Plan-C." 

 

My two long-term R&D projects have taken years to complete. Hopefully, this one not as long as my now 23-year-long-effort with developing early-dementia-detection and its proper-diagnosis-and-prognosis that is the other 80% of my $200,000 annual research and development funding efforts. It is also an opportunity to introduce my good friend and neighbor, Elizbeth Dunn, who has kindly agreed to become my Estate Executor and help with the continuation of this effort long after I am gone, as overseer of my Trust Fund dedicated to these two areas of my interest. 

 

[Elizabeth so reminds me of my dear wife Pat with her intelligence and focus on getting things done, while I take off on my visionary flights-of-fancy, imaginative ideas, creative daydreams, fantastical visions, innovative musings, inspired fantasies, dreamlike concepts, futuristic dreams, avant-garde imaginings, and utopian reveries. (Thanks to ChatGPT for helping me find the right expression – I liked them all!) I badly need her help with getting my act together before it is too late, such as selecting one of many options, such as one of those expressions and not all of them!]

 

Ken and his dear wife and new baby serve as representatives of my target-market -- young families with kids potentially interested in aviation. They begin a visit to the SD Air & Space Museum and experience their outstanding 3-D experience. Next, they go over to the great fight-simulator for a simulated flight experience, just like the one I went over with the folks at the National Air & Space Museum in Dayton, OH last Solstice (see “Plan-B”.) Normally the following step would be an EAA Young Eagles flight experience out at a field, such as Brown Field here in S.D.

 

What I am proposing is a memorable experience before that first actual EAA flight, an eVTOL flight out at the SD Air & Space Museum at Gillespie Field annex to provide the visceral-feel of actual flight and generate enthusiasm for their first flight with EAA Young Eagles. I've already obtained enthusiastic support for all this from the local FAA FSDO office and the Gillespie airport Administration. The only stumbling-block has been with the Museum's liability-insurance issue. They apparently don't yet understand the extreme measures I've taken for the total safety of any person in my experimental eVTOL project now capable of flying, but in storage out at the Gillespie Field Annex until we get this stumbling-block finally resolved. I have taken extreme measures to assure the safety of the individual in the pilot's-seat. I’ve named some of them above. Also very-similar, but less-safe operations are already in commercial operation here in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, such as in China, so it is not impossible to obtain liability-insurance for such an operation! We just need to educate the insurers and demonstrate its inherent safety features!

 

In addition to giving a visceral-experience, this should do a lot to generate enthusiasm for taking EAA Young Eagle flights out at Brown Field. There is nothing like an experience such as this for cementing an idea in a young person’s head. I guarantee it! If I’m wrong, then they can just hang it up in the raters of their hangar as another static-display, just like that old ultralight that I’ve flown many times before but then never moved-on to complete my now long-expired Student Pilot’s license from the FAA.

 

This new-technology advanced-electric-propulsion for aviation is a game-changer. While this form of eVTOL is not as viable commercial option as ultralights, Beta and others I’ve been visiting monthly at the Springield-Beckly Airport in Ohio have the right combination for commercial success. These ultralight eVTOLs are just a great tool for giving kids a true flight experience and to get them started investigating aviation-related activities. I have my own RYSE-Recon on order for September delivery and am now equipping my Z51 2021 C8 HTC Corvette with a hitch to tow it back here to La Jolla for flying with our Ultralight Chapter 114 out at 13531 Otay Lakes Rd Jamul, CA 91935. I’m also signing-up out there for my first tandem-jump, now at age 82, before it’s too late!

Draft - 6/20/2024 8:06 AM

{Vision Update}