Displayed At EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2025

ANN’s Rex Alexander spoke with Jason Nerio of Cherokee Federal at the 2025 EAA AirVenture Air Show and Fly-in in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, who gave the lowdown on the company’s all-new technology: a mobile vertipad for VTOL aircraft. It is unique in that nobody else has developed anything like this.

It is unlike any other infrastructure for vertical lift operations such as helidecks and helidollies or permanent helipads.

Nobody else has made a robust platform that is on wheels and can be positioned pretty much anywhere. The sides fold up and it weighs just 8,500 lb so it can be towed behind a standard half-ton pickup truck. The one at OSH was driven up on the highways from Oklahoma.

The sticker price on this unit is $265,000.

Visitors to the company’s booth at OSH were very interested, including fixed-wing pilots who stopped by and asked all the right questions. The most asked question was, “Well, what do I need this for?”

AAM, or advanced air mobility is a big target market for the company, and emphasized that the platform can accommodate approximately 4,000 lb of battery chargers underneath the deck, so the unit is a movable vertiport and charging station all in one.

Cherokee Federal has developed use cases for the platform and will deliver it on the spot wherever it’s needed, such as disaster relief after a hurricane, flood, or wildland firefighting. The 4,000 lb under platform load can also be fire retardant to reload those platforms during deployments.

The mobile pad auto-levels itself up to a 7% grade, minimizing the amount of setup needed. In fact, Nerio said it can be positioned and set up in about five minutes.

The 24’ x 24’ size also minimizes the amount of land that needs to be cleared for setup. The pad was static load-tested up to 30,000 lb out to the edge of the platform. Assuming a good pilot that can land with under 2g of force, the pad can handle up to a 15,000 lb helicopter in the smaller utility range such as a Bell 429.

Cherokee Federal is working on design concepts as large as a 60-foot size they’re calling the MVP-XL that would be transported on a semi-trailer based system that can handle Black Hawks, H53 and the larger platforms.

The company is also working on design concept of a 100-foot platform that would be ground-based.

The MVP is a portable, temporary, and robust vertiport.

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FMI: cherokee-federal.com/mvp, www.youtube.com/aerotvnetwork