Orca is the Hungarian air ambulance

A Hungarian team won third place in the design competition of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) with an electric-powered, vertical take-off and landing ambulance named Orca.

RAeS announces its international aircraft design competition every year, and this team of young designers from Pécs won third place with a brilliant solution. The employees of the Magnus Aircraft aircraft factory operating at the pagan airport near Pécs – Soma Varga, Zsolt Koltai, Ákos Matyus, Gábor Rabovszky and Péter Pieczarka – competed with engineering teams from India, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America and England.

The team would also build an Orca-powered electric vehicle designed for vertical take-off and landing patient transport tasks in the future. Soma Varga, team leader and designer responsible for the aerodynamics of the aircraft, said that due to the difficult rescue conditions of Hurricane Irma 2017, a vehicle was designed that could transport patients faster and more efficiently than gas turbine helicopters.

Soma Varga said they will continue the work because their planned vehicle is feasible and they want to come up with a working prototype within a few years. As a first step, they want to build a 1: 4 scale version to test control, surface interaction, and test flight.

In addition to the pilot, the cockpit of the aircraft designed by the Pécs team would accommodate a doctor and an inpatient, and the aircraft would be powered by seven electric rotors, the first two of which could be rotated, thus helping to lift and advance the aircraft. The two-tonne machine would be able to carry a total of about 300 kilograms of payload, and the simulations so far show that it can cover at least 110 kilometers by charging its battery.