Thu, Oct 21, 2004
California Company Completes Work On Flying Saucer Mock-Up
As far as we know, Yuba City (CA) is nowhere near Roswell (NM).
But both can lay claim to reports of flying saucers in the
vicinity. The only difference is, the Yuba City flying saucer is
most assuredly real.
CADD Van Du LLC describes the XB-2 plane as the equivalent of a
functional flying saucer. It certainly looks like one. But the
plane is real and could help save people’s lives.
CADD Van Du says it has finished a carbon-fiber, mock-up model
this week to ship to the Nara Institute of Science and Technology
in Japan where doctoral candidate William Rieken is researching the
plane as his dissertation. The eight-foot-wide, unmanned plane
would be equipped with cameras and sensors to find lost people or
to be used for police and intelligence work.
The plane is designed to lift and take off from a standstill,
flying at 250 mph to its destination where it will take a
360-degree picture of the surroundings. CADD Van Du expects to ink
a contract by the end of the month to build as many as 10 of the
planes that can fly, said Donn Van Dusen, CADD Van Du’s
manager and chief operating officer. The mock-up version just
completed is a nonflying version without engines. It will be used
to test the plane’s cameras.
If CADD Van Du gets the deal, plans are to expand into another
Yuba City location and hire as many as 16 additional employees. The
company has to raise money to build the planes and is looking
mainly for grants, Van Dusen said. The small, six-person company
has made a $20,000 bid to build the planes, spending about a
thousand employee hours on the seven-week project.
It went ahead and built the mock-up model on its own after a
manufacturing deal with another company fell through, turning
Rieken’s basic designs into the carbon fiber model. That has
meant long days for the product development firm’s employees.
Van Dusen said he worked 42 hours straight last week when he was
molding the carbon fiber mock-up.
"It’s been a huge challenge day to day," Van Dusen
said.
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