'Pipedreams' Do Come True

By Gene Yarbrough

Samson Sky, the “flying motorcycle” guys have been a perennial fixture at the national airshows for years, many thinking they were nothing but so many flashes in the pan, pie in the sky flights of fancy we have seen before. We have all just been corrected in a most pleasant manner.

Those that have kept up with samson have seen trials and tribulations working thru cobbling together a road driveable aircraft that did both functions well enough to be practical and attractive enough to be desirable. The Samson Switchblade is by all accounts an attractive vehicle shedding the usual awkwardness of a combo vehicle. We have seen the company deal with teething issues including a 4 cylinder engine that didn’t quite deliver as expected to creating a swing wing architecture stout enough for flight.

As of March 30 Samson has had technical success doing ground hops with the aircraft, but todays press release shows a definitive flight debunking long held disbelief of actual flight. In todays press release owner Sam Bousfield said “We had pushed through all day Saturday and most of Sunday with just very small hops being accomplished and had finished all but the last test in the test matrix. It was late in the day, and the Switchblade lifted off less abruptly than before. We climbed to 60'; above the runway, flew approximately 4,500'; and then landed on the runway again.”

Discoveries during initial flight tests are always a slow proposition, balancing the strong desire to see your creation take flight, butted against the safety aspect of continuing with a ship that may need a bit more refinement, adjustments, and tweaks. Sam further commented on the short flight “The pilot made the call not to continue with our hoped-for pattern flight (flying around the airport to land again where we started), as there was an issue with pitch control (nose up or down) that became obvious we would want handled before doing that longer flight. The pitch sensitivity issue has already been explored, with simple solutions now being implemented. It won't be long before we are back up there, and then flying repeatedly and making history.”

We applaud the Samson Sky team on their accomplishments and look forward to seeing them at Oshkosh this year, hopefully with a ship capable of full demonstration flights.

FMI: www.samsonsky.com