The Upper Leventina, faced with the consequences of the downsizing of important activities such as the army and railways, is entering a new phase of relaunch that wants to be lasting and sustainable. In addition to the "new Valascia", which will be inaugurated for the 2021-22 season, and the "new Airolo" (with the project to cover the motorway junction and redevelopment of the valley floor with excavated materials from the second Gotthard tunnel), emerges now - thanks to the newly established Ambrì Airport Development Committee - the idea of making a highly innovative, technological and ecological project 'take off'. We are talking about the fascinating segment of urban (or intra-urban) air mobility that is developing thanks to vertical take-off and landing aircraft, the so-called VTOLs (Vertical Take-Off and Landing), which in the electric version become eVTOL. Neither helicopter nor drone, eVTOL represents a new frontier of individual (and collective) mobility that is increasingly attracting the interest of companies and investors around the world. In fact, eVTOL market growth is estimated to be up to $ 14,7 billion by 2041.
In Ticino there has been a development project for such an aircraft for some years now, F-Helix, designed by Felice Vinati, a lively entrepreneur from Brescia who has been living in Ticino for years and has been involved in the VTOL segment for some time. Vinati had in fact taken over in 1990 the Italian company Silvercraft, known for its SH-4 light aircraft and from which it took inspiration to design F-Helix, with a concept developed in collaboration with the Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence at Pennsylvania State University in the United States. The startup company F-Helix is currently incubated at the USI Startup Center (the startup incubator of the Università della Svizzera italiana) in Lugano. "The great novelty of the F-Helix project lies not so much in the concept of self-rotating or electrically powered aircraft - similar projects already exist - but in the increased capacity of autorotation, which is not possible for aircraft equipped with multiple propellers and, above all, , in the genre of electric propulsion ”, explains Vinati.
This "made in Ticino" eVTOL, in fact, will adopt the revolutionary technology of hydrogen batteries, much lighter than lithium batteries and, as you can easily guess, particularly environmentally friendly, both for production (less gray energy) and for consumption (zero emissions). Vinati again: "What I would like to do now is to find a base in Ticino where to continue the design of the aircraft and its innovative engine powered by hydrogen cells (cryogenic tanks), but also of the computer programs that complete it and, last but not least, to carry out the tests. In practice, I would like to be able to install a technical demonstrator, in 1: 8 scale, and have a facility to accommodate the computer engineers - half a dozen young people living in the Canton - who are developing two essential programs for the F-Helix project: iTower , a mobile virtual 'control tower' for 5G devices, and WITP Cables, a map of cables and other in-flight obstacles to prevent collisions. Ideally I look for a space near an airfield or airfield. In this regard, I joined the aforementioned Leventina initiative at the invitation of the President of the Ambrì Airport Development Committee, Mr. Danilo Gobbi. Like him and the co-signatories of the initiative, in fact, I believe that this project has an important potential for the creation of highly specialized jobs in the fields of aviation, information technology and technologies for clean energy ”.
