Columbus’ ‘paper’ airplane puts all others to shame
Trident Design is taking a break from its typical licensing model to run a company that can sell its newly crowdfunded tech toy. The Carbon Flyer remote control plane. The Carbon Flyer is a battery-powered carbon-fiber drone affixed with a video camera that can be steered using a smartphone. Pre-orders were sky high and the company passed over $150,000 after being on Indiegogo for only two weeks. The company wanted to sell the toy itself and on Nov. 18 incorporated Carbon Flyer LLC as a spinoff company that will sell the drone and future models.
The plane took some trial and error development, mostly because the planes kept crashing. Trident founder Chris Hawker is fairly certain there’s a drowned prototype on a roof somewhere in Columbus. Aside from their own input, Trident Design also used a German toy designer who developed the Bluetooth remote-control app for the Carbon Flyer. The app allows users to navigate the plane by tilting the phone and controlling speed with your thumb.
The drones are expected to ship to crowdfunding backers in the summer, but for those that want to give the gift of flight this holiday season, Trident Design will send a card describing the drone and its ship date. In other news, Frisbees are very excited about having this new friend to hang out with on the garage (or neighbor’s) roof.
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