Personal Jet

SeaSTOL VLJ stands for Sea Short Take Off and Landing Very Light Jet. If you don't get the idea of very light jet, you might understand if the term used were "personal jet".

VLJs are small jet aircraft for about 5-8 people that are small enough to utilize small airports. In other words, in the future, it is very possible to take taxi flights from one point to another without compromise and saving a lot of your time. Eclipse is one of most well known VLJ companies, at some point they were looking at 5000 orders and increasing. There are about 20 new models coming between 2010 and 2014 that mainly focus on American market. However, not a single VLJ is a seaplane.

Designer : Tomas Brødreskift

Text from Tomas:

I wished to take a look at how I could improve and hopefully visualize, design and build a new solution to the Watergoing Aircraft of today, by utilizing this new and unique technology, consisting of small compact, light – weight jet engines, and avionics that will allow anything. I believe both the technology and the market is ready, and in place to take on these challenges. It is impossible to look at the future without taking into account that water – and air has to be utilized and investigated further in order to make personal transportation many steps easier and more comfortable. This SeaSTOL VLJ project produced a concept model of a new Waterborne VLJ Aircraft shape.

A plane is categorized and constructed from a set of factors regarding three basic areas:

• The weight it can carry
• The distance it can fly
• How fast it flies

These are important questions which have been taken into account in this project as well. But, the design of modern aircraft should also to a great extent answer users' questions & problems with existing platforms. In SeaSTOL VLJ project the aircraft is designed to cover the gap between the conservatism and technology in the commercial VLJ marked with the excitement & bald designs in the experimental class of aircraft. Seaplanes are by far some of the most flexible aircraft that exist. my goal at the end was to blend the technology & durability of modern VLJ`s with this `flexibility` & try to enhance the `flexibility`, in order to achieve the making of visual interpretations that could support the "fun factor" & excitement we find in experimental aircraft design.

It is clear in my mentality that this flexible seaplane VLJ has an irresistible culmination of qualities, and presents a new class of aircraft altogether.

The SeaSTOL VLJ project was done whilst studying Industrial Design in Essen, Germany in 2008. But it has never been published at extent to date, and still remains a dream to be built in the future. Today I am managing a small aircraft company in Norway called Equator Aircraft Norway SA. We are developing a smaller seaplane called the EQP2. The SeaSTOL VLJ is still on our design table, and I hope to realize it. Please feel free to visit our website for more info on the Equator System as well.