Single-Seat Vertical Takeoff and Landing Jet Aircraft

Another crazy project

Pro­fes­sion­al pilot and inven­tor of portable water and jet pow­ered vehi­cles Franky Zap­a­ta, after prov­ing the safe­ty and effec­tive­ness of his jet pow­ered cre­ation Fly­board Air, said his next tar­get would be a fly­ing car! The per­sis­tence of the inven­tor and his team led to a crazy project called JetRac­er!

What is Jetracer?

The JetRac­er is a sin­gle-seat ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing air­craft with­out an air­foil, pow­ered by ten micro-tur­bo­jets. Its main flight advan­tages are max­i­mum speed and high maneu­ver­abil­i­ty due to a rel­a­tive­ly short flight range. The JetRac­er is built on a light­weight and mod­u­lar chas­sis that allows it to meet mul­ti­ple civil­ian and mil­i­tary needs, as well as being remote­ly pilot­ed. All crit­i­cal sys­tems are designed to pro­vide an extreme­ly high lev­el of redun­dan­cy and safe­ty: propul­sion, con­trol, pow­er sup­ply, etc.

Accord­ing to the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the devel­op­er, JetRac­er is capa­ble of climb­ing to a height of up to 3,000 meters, reach­ing a hor­i­zon­tal flight speed of up to 250 km/h, and trans­port­ing car­go with a total weight of up to 200 kg. The reserve poten­tial of the key com­po­nents of the machine allows you to eas­i­ly sur­vive the fail­ure of up to two out of ten engines, the fail­ure of the con­trol sys­tem, fuel sys­tem and pow­er source (for each engine). Also at the dis­pos­al of the pilot is a unique pilot­ing assis­tance sys­tem, which, judg­ing by the video, among oth­er things, allows you to safe­ly per­form such aer­o­bat­ics as a bar­rel roll.

Especially for those who are obsessed with flying

In par­al­lel with the JetRac­er launch, Franky Zap­a­ta plans to run a flight test cam­paign in the US, where he plans to recruit up to 100 peo­ple, from which 25 peo­ple will be select­ed based on pre-test results to par­tic­i­pate in the JetRac­er flight test!

About the developer

Franky Zap­a­ta (French Franky Zap­a­ta; born Sep­tem­ber 27, 1978, Mar­seille, Bouch­es-du-Rhone, France) is a French water trans­port pilot, inven­tor of the water fly­board and jet fly­board, founder of Zap­a­ta Rac­ing. Since 2012, he has focused on the devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion of per­son­al fly­boards for ground and sur­face flights. On August 4, 2019, he crossed the Eng­lish Chan­nel with a refu­el­ing stop at the mid­point on board the ship. His 35-kilo­me­ter flight was car­ried out accom­pa­nied by three French heli­copters and war­ships.