XTI Aircraft today announced a preliminary agreement for Honeywell Aerospace to provide the HTS900 turboshaft to power the first prototype of its planned TriFan 600 vertical takeoff business aircraft. The airframer expects to achieve a first flight with the two-thirds piloted subscale prototype by August 2018.
Denver-based XTI will now build an operational propulsion jet stand to house the HTS900 engine, the drive train system, fans and flight controls as it prepares to complete development of the prototype. Honeywell also has agreed to provide an additional example of the engine for the ground propulsion test system.
Propelled by three ducted fans, the fixed wing TriFan 600 will take off and land vertically. The six-seat aircraft’s two wing fans will rotate forward to achieve a cruise speed of 400 mph and range of up to 1,600 miles. The aft-mounted third fan will be engaged only during takeoff and landing. During the cruise phase, at altitudes of over 30,000 feet, it is retracted and stowed behind clamshell-shaped doors to give the airframe a more aerodynamic contour.
The HTS900 is based on dual-centrifugal compressor architecture. It has previously been selected to power the Marenco SwissHelicopter Skye SH09 and Bell ARH-70 Arapaho armed reconnaissance helicopter.
The prototype will be a single-engine aircraft, but the full-scale TriFan 600 will have two 2,500-hp turboshaft engines. In both cases, the engines will drive the three ducted fans via a single transmission. XTI, which intends to build the test stand when sufficient funding is in place by around the fourth quarter of this year, will have the option of using the HTS900 for both the ground test unit and the prototype, or deploying Honeywell's LTS101 engine for ground testing.
In January 2016, XTI launched an international stock offering under SEC Regulation A+ rules. Later this year, it intends to expand the equity offering through an over-the-counter secondary market for all Reg A+ investors. In August 2015, the company, which started work on the TriFan 600 back in 2012, launched a crowd-funding campaign that it said attracted more than $20 million in non-binding expressions of interest for the program.
According to XTI founder and chairman David Brody, the company expects to need around $450 million to take the TriFan 600 to service entry over the next six to eight years. “We're taking this one step at a time and focusing right now on raising the $15 million needed for the two-thirds subscale piloted prototype,” he commented. “Testing and flying the prototype is a mileshote that will validate the engineering ane enable XTI to raise additional funding. We will be announcing our financing progress from time to time as we move forward.”