There was a big ballyhoo at Sun & Fun this year about the brand new flying car that is touted to change the way we think about flying and driving. I saw it and suppose that it is an okay idea – as far as it goes. I can’t imagine anybody but your average rich eccentric wanting to own one. Even though the idea of a flying car sounds modern, it has been done before and I am pretty sure it has no practical application other than you can get it washed cheaper at the carwash than you probably can at the airport.

Also, the flying car that we really all want and are angry that our futures didn’t provide us is the classic Jetson’s flying car. It would swoop around and fold up into a briefcase so that George had absolutely no parking problems. Strangely, when Jetson got his car home he always parked it and never folded it.

An important facet of the Jetson flying car that current flying automobile designers are totally missing is that it never ever drove on the ground. It always flew. Sure, it flew along “highways in the sky” with traffic lights and such, but the flying car we all dreamed about as kids would never get stuck on a toll bridge or in the construction that is eternally around Knoxville and south of Atlanta.

The flying car idea has a special relevance in today’s government controlled stinky economy. If the flying car ever becomes a reality in the marketplace, then two industries – the automobile and the aircraft manufacturers – can all go bankrupt at one fell swoop, thereby saving the bankruptcy courts half of their time.

I would like to suggest that aircraft designers haven’t thought out this airplane/automobile thing well enough. I think somebody should come up with the “Total Utility Recreational-Flying Device” or “TURD”.

This aircraft hybrid would do it all. Everybody would want a flying TURD in their lives. I suggest that from the very first design stage, the TURD should have the ability to do the following:

• Recover from a spin (Cessna, get right on that – willya?)


• The TURD should float


• Mow my grass


• Pull a medium to large sized travel trailer or horse trailer


• Hover


• Fully aerobatic


• Mach 2 capable


• Excellent sound system

I personally think an aircraft like this would sell itself. The possibilities for marketing it are almost endless, but in these troubled times I can see the very first sales pitch that can appear on billboards and advertisements world-wide:

When the Poop Hits the Fan, You Belong in a Flying TURD