We hope you are having an great summer full of flying!  Things here at Terrafugia couldn't be more exciting!  In this issue, you'll find information on Oshkosh, the FAA, and our new 3-Axis CNC router.

If you have any questions about Terrafugia or the Transition^®, please feel free to send us an e-mail at info@terrafugia.com.   We also appreciate you spreading the news by forwarding this e-mail to fellow aviation enthusiasts.   You can read past issues and sign up for yourself at: http://www.terrafugia.com/newsletter.html

We are also on Facebook!  Here we provide more frequent updates along with pictures, videos and events.  If you are on Facebook, we encourage you to become a fan at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Terrafugia/49595516603

As always, if you are interested in reserving your own Transition^®, please e-mail us at sales@terrafugia.com or visit http://www.terrafugia.com/order.html

~The Terrafugia Team

Terrafugia is excited to announce that the FAA has granted the Transition^® a special exemption.  This exemption will allow the Transition^® to have a maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) of 1430 lbs (650 kg) instead of 1320 lbs (600 kg) -- the MTOW for other non-amphibious LSAs.   

This additional weight accommodates the structure and equipment required to comply with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.   Items such as airbags, crumple zones, a passenger safety cage and other automotive safety systems which are found in today's automobiles will increase the safety of the Transition® both on the road and in the air.  

We believe that the additional 110 pounds will allow us to provide a competitive useful load while at the same time providing a revolutionary level of crash safety in a Light Sport Aircraft.  With the granting of this exemption, the FAA recognized the potential public good that the Transition® can bring to the aviation community with an additional 110 lbs for safety systems.

A copy of the exemption can be viewed here.

Terrafugia would like to thank the EAA, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), the Light Aircraft Manufacturers Association (LAMA), and Women in Aviation International (WAI) for their support of our petition for exemption.

As you can imagine, this has generated a lot of press.  Here is a snapshot of some of the articles...
EAA: FAA OKs Terrafugia's Extra Weight Request
AOPA: FAA Grants Roadable Airplane Weight Exemption

For the past year our team of dedicated engineers has been focused on improving the design of the Transition^®.  And they have succeeded.   After over a year of hard work, we are very excited to release the updated design of the Transition^® on July 26, 2010 at 10:30 am at AirVenture Oshkosh! 

We want to be clear that the next prototype of the Transition^® will not be at Oshkosh this year -- it's under construction now.  (See below for an update.) However, we will have models, computer graphics, and videos of the new design as well as the original POC vehicle on static display. 

Events of interest during the week include:

• Monday:   10:30 am - Press conference and next generation design unveiling in our exhibit, space 23
• Tuesday:  8:30 am - CEO/CTO Carl Dietrich presents "Terrafugia's New Design", Pavilion 08 
• Wednesday:  10:00 am - COO Anna Dietrich joins Women in Aviation (WAI) on EAA Radio
• Thursday:  11:20 am - COO Anna Dietrich on AOPA Live (http://www.aopalive.org/)
• Friday:  8:30 am - CEO/CTO Carl Dietrich presents "EAA and Terrafugia", Pavilion 11
• Saturday:  1:00 pm - CEO/CTO Carl Dietrich presents "Terrafugia's New Design", Pavilion 04

We are in the same location as we were last year.  For those of you who missed last year, we are in booth 23 which is located across from the yellow AOPA tent.  If you enter the new main gate on the grounds, immediately head down the road that angles 45 degrees to the left -- we will be down near the next side entrance gate on your left.  We hope to see you at Oshkosh!

See http://www.airventure.org/ for more information.

Ever since the Proof Of Concept Transition^® completed flight testing in the summer of 2009, our engineers have been working hard to update and perfect the design based on the lessons learned during our testing program and state of the art optimization tools.  We are happy to announce that we have now begun construction of some early components and the tooling which will be used for the next prototype!  We are very excited about the results of this process, and we can't wait to show the final product to the rest of the world.  

Even with the new design ready to go, the next vehicle will not be complete until next year. If you can't wait to see what it looks like, come to Oshkosh where we will reveal computer graphics that depict what the next prototype will look like.  Shortly thereafter we will put the new images on our website, and on our Facebook page.  

To help get the next prototype built as soon as possible, we've installed a 3-axis 3'x5'x10' router which we are using to CNC cut molds for the vehicle.  This tool has already helped speed up our prototype mold production process while ensuring precision parts.  We expect to keep this machine very busy in the coming months.  Stay tuned for other construction updates.