Design
Honda decided to go with an unusual over-the-wing podded engine configuration. This feature was developed on the innovative Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke VFW-614 decades earlier. It allows for more space within the fuselage and reduces drag at high speeds. The fuselage itself is made from lightweight composite materials. The wings are made from structurally reinforced single sheets of aluminum. The use of a single sheet allows for a smoother surface than more conventional methods. Design testing on wing shape and design were done on a T-33 Shooting Star, modified by AVTEL Services, Inc., and flight tested at the Mojave Airport. Honda began developing its own small turbofan engine, the HF118, in 1999. This led to the HF120, developed with GE Aviation under the GE-Honda partnership. The HF120 was test-flown both on a Cessna Citation and a modified Boeing 727-100. The engine features a single fan, a two-stage compressor and a two-stage turbine.
Honda claims that the combination of lightweight materials, aerodynamics and efficient engines gives the HondaJet as much as 35% higher fuel efficiency than similar aircraft.
The aircraft is equipped with a touchscreen 3-display Garmin G3000 glass cockpit system (i.e. most of the cockpit readouts are presented on flat-panel displays).
Read more about this topic: Honda HA-420 Honda Jet
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“The reason American cars don’t sell anymore is that they have forgotten how to design the American Dream. What does it matter if you buy a car today or six months from now, because cars are not beautiful. That’s why the American auto industry is in trouble: no design, no desire.”
—Karl Lagerfeld (b. 1938)
“I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ’s sake not black—
nor white either—and not polished!
Let it be weathered—like a farm wagon—”
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
“For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)