There's a new black bird on the horizon. This is the Cobalt Co50 Valkyrie, a new five-seat canard-style aircraft for the refined aviating millionaire. The single engine piston airplane will top out at 260 knots (300 miles per hour) thanks to its 350 horsepower, with a range of 1,050 nautical miles (1,200 miles).

Cobalt officially unveiled the Valkyrie in San Francisco. In truth, this is the fifth prototype of the plane, and though the engine is installed, it has yet to fly. But founder David Loury promises this is the finally design of the aircraft, and Cobalt is about to get busy delivering it to buyers who have lined up to pay the $699,000 price tag. "It's now possible to bring a new aircraft to life," Loury says.

Cobalt

But—as we saw when we talked to the guys behind the new Icon A5, who spent at least seven years bringing their sexy ultralight airplane into reality—it takes time. Loury, a Frenchman, drew the first sketches a decade ago, founded Cobalt in 2008, and debuted a prototype he'd been working on in 2010 at the big air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. But then Cobalt almost fell off the map, at least as far as publicity is concerned. "They think we're dead," Loury told me last month when he stopped by the Popular Mechanics office.

In fact, Cobalt had moved to Canada, where he thought about building a plant, and then eventually to the sunny skies of Merced, California, where he could hire daredevil pilots to test the design in constant West Coast sunshine. Silicon Valley culture also helped Loury overcome all the people who said he was mad to build a new plane from scratch. "In California, there's always somebody more crazy than you—and more successful."

"It's now possible to bring a new aircraft to life"

Cobalt

Now the final design has arrived. Beyond the plane's sweeping one-piece glass canopy that offers its occupants 320 degrees of view, which Loury calls the largest in the world, the first thing you might notice are the wee winglets toward the front of the aircraft. The Valkyrie is a canard—the only one currently certified for the market.

"The principle is that you have a forewing, and the wing is behind, and you have a center of gravity that is between them." Your pitch control comes from that forewing, the canard, which always has an angle of attack a few degrees more than the wing, Loury says. If you start to stall the plane, you stall the canard first, but the setup allows the aircraft to "reattach the flow before the wing has had time to stall," he says. "When canards are well-designed, they don't stall. They are absolutely fantastic."

Aside from a few amateur designs, and some experimental work by legendary aviation designer Burt Rutan, the canard design basically disappeared from the commercial market. But it's not hard to see why Loury would want to bring it back. New planes like the Valkyrie and A5 are trying to bring some of the joy and sex appeal back to flying: "The 'cool effect' will be preserved where we can," he says. "The pleasure has to be brought back to aviation." Part of that is making them simple to fly so more people can get into aviation without the barrier to entry that a typical complicated cockpit provides. If newbies are flying these machines, though, then you want these new aircraft to be as safe and foolproof as possible. Where Icon went with a design that just peacefully floats when it stalls, Cobalt built a canard that—Loury hopes—can't stall at all.

"When canards are well-designed, they don't stall. They are absolutely fantastic."

Cobalt

Cobalt is now taking orders for the certified Co50 Valkyrie. You'll need a $15,000 deposit to secure your place on the list for the $699,000 plane, which should see deliveries in summer 2017. That's a pretty steep price tag when you compare it to the Icon A5's $249,000, but then again, this is a different kind of plane. Where the Icon is a two-seater made for fun and nothing but, the five-seat Valkyrie could be used as an air taxi. It could be used by small businesses who need air travel now and then, and lease out the aircraft to flight schools or other clients in the interim.

For now, Loury is just anxious for people to try his creation. "A satisfied pilot will sell an aircraft better than any one of us," he says.

Cobalt

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