Ever have the hankering to build an airplane you could fly?
Not a drone or a toy, but a real two-seater, flight-worthy plane that could carry you from here to Key West, Florida, in about five hours on a single tank of fuel?
DarkAero is a young Madison company that says it manufactures most of the parts you will need. DarkAero makes aircraft kits, working out of a Dane County Regional Airport hangar.
Three brothers with a longtime love affair with flying — Keegan, River and Ryley Karl — were captivated by the aircraft they saw each year at the EAA AirVenture, a gathering of planes of all types and ages in Oshkosh. They decided they could come up with their own design based on new technology that would travel faster, farther and more efficiently than anything they’d seen.
Natives of Frederic, Wisconsin, and UW-Madison graduates, the brothers, ages 28 to 32, quit their jobs in July 2017 and formed a self-funded company, DarkAero. They have progressed far enough that they were invited to display a prototype at this year’s EAA Innovation Showcase in July.
“This is certainly the biggest and riskiest endeavor we have ever embarked upon, but it wasn’t something we decided to do on a whim,” Ryley Karl said. “We had been talking about starting a company together ever since we were in college.” Read the full story here.
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