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Thursday, 20 June 2013

Toyota TA-1 Prototype Single Engine, 4-place Aircraft

Toyota TA-1 Prototype Single Engine, 4-place Aircraft:

The Toyota TAA-1 (also referred to in the press as the TA-1) was a
prototype general aviation aircraft substantially built and test flown
by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites under contract with Toyota.
First flight of the aircraft took place at the Mojave Airport on May
31, 2002. The project was a joint effort of Toyota Motor Corporation
(TMC) and Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc (TMS) to determine if "Toyota's
aerodynamics and low-cost production technologies could be applied to
the small aircraft sector." Although Toyota announced the first
flight, Company executives have remained relatively silent about the
project, and many in the general aviation industry were unaware that
the aircraft was even being built.
              The prototype TAA-1 is a 4-place, single piston engine
aircraft powered by an "engine produced by an outside manufacturer",
according to Toyota, and presumably built by Textron Lycoming. (in the
1990s, Toyota attempted to adapt one of their Lexus engines for
aviation purposes, but eventually shelved the project due to an
industry downturn). The wing, as well as the fuselage, of the aircraft
is carbon fiber, constructed in a one piece co-cured single-molded
configuration. The fuselage was fabricated by Rocky Mountain
Composites, Inc. using a proprietary fiber wetting and placement
technique, the wings were produced by Radius Engineering, Inc. with a
modified resin transfer molding process. The project was unique for
Scaled Composites as never before had an aircraft been completed there
using composite wing and fuselage structures that were designed and
fabricated elsewhere.
The empty weight of the prototype was significantly beyond predictions
and the unsubstantiated rumors within the industry are that the
aircraft's performance during the test flight was below what was
expected, and it does not appear that much flight test activity
followed the initial flight. The prototype aircraft remains stored in
a Scaled Composites hangar. A follow-on design, TAA-2, (substantially
similar airframe with retractable landing gear, upgraded avionics and
higher performance engine with constant speed propeller) was also
envisioned however never made it to the prototype stage.
After several years of negotiation for a potential joint venture with
the general aviation piston aircraft market leader of that time,
interest in the TAA-1 declined after the initial flight test and that
outside partnership development evaporated shortly thereafter.
The Toyota TA-1 was a prototype general aviation aircraft built by
Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites under contract.
First flight of the aircraft took place at the Mojave Spaceport on May
31, 2002. The project was a joint effort of Toyota Motor Corporation
(TMC) and Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc (TMS) to determine if "Toyota's
aerodynamics and low-cost production technologies could be applied to
the small aircraft sector." Although Toyota announced the first
flight, Company executives have remained relatively silent about the
project, and many in the general aviation industry were unaware that
the aircraft was even being built.
                The first flight was the culmination of fours years'
design work by a team of 40 engineers, many formerly of Boeing and
Raytheon, at TMS's Long Beach facilities. A Toyota official would only
say, "We are studying the potential for a single-engine piston plane
but there is not a lot we can say." Scaled Composites turned the
Toyota engineers' design work into reality and hosted the flight test
program at Mojave. Rutan, in a public address, called the aircraft
"the aeronautical equivalent to the Lexus LS400."The prototype TA-1 is
a 4-place, single piston engine aircraft powered by an "engine
produced by an outside manufacturer", according to Toyota, and
presumably built by Textron Lycoming (in the 1990s, Toyota attempted
to adapt one of their Lexus engines for aviation purposes, but
eventually shelved the project due to an industry downturn). The
fuselage of the aircraft is carbon-fiber, constructed in a one-piece
co-cured single-molded configuration. Unsubstantiated rumors within
the industry are that the aircraft's performance during the test
flight was below what was expected, and it does not appear that much
flight test activity followed the initial flight. The prototype
aircraft remains stored in a Scaled Composites hangar.


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Regards,

Er Ayushi Saxena  [ B E CS, MBA ]
Management Trainee / Software Engineer / Webmaster
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