V/STOL Aircraft Design Considerations, Case Studies and Lessons Learned (Online Short Course – Starts 28 October 2025) 28 October 2025 - 20 November 2025 Online

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• From 28 October – 20 November 2025 (4 Weeks, 8 Classes, 16 Total Hours)
• Every Tuesday and Thursday at 1–3 p.m. Eastern Time (all sessions will be recorded and available for replay; course notes will be available for download)
• A comprehensive overview of V/STOL and its unique engineering challenges, taught by unparalleled experts in the field.
• All students will receive an AIAA Certificate of Completion at the end of the course.

OVERVIEW

This course will introduce the student to the design aspects of vertical and short takeoff and landing aircraft, with an emphasis on the basic configurations available to the designer and what design criteria drove a particular configuration. Emphasis will be placed on the operational need for V/STOL, their long-sought benefits, its industrial legacy, past challenges, and state-of-the-art. The course will briefly look at how the future may be shaped by these specialized aircraft.

The technical obstacles associated with developing aircraft that have vertical and short take-off and landing capabilities will be presented, along with case studies that will reveal both successful and unsuccessful V/STOL aircraft programs and their important lessons.

This course is offered by the AIAA V/STOL Systems Technical Committee. The expert speakers from US industries, the government, and academia, all have firsthand experience in the development of V/STOL aircraft.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the conclusion of this short course, students would have become familiar with:

• The major design constraints in designing a V/STOL aircraft
• The various propulsion configurations available in the past and applications for future V/STOL designs
• Past and current types of V/STOL aircraft and their experimental and operational applications
• Fundamentals of V/STOL jet effects and other systems aspects of V/STOL flight
• The various approaches to V/STOL aircraft testing and lessons learned.
• The pros and cons of different V/STOL aircraft based on Case Studies, and what characteristics made them viable or not.

AUDIENCE: This course is aimed at technicians, engineers, pilots, and managers, both newcomers to the field and specialists in search of a broader perspective, who would benefit from an overview of V/STOL aircraft, their performance, and its technology. The content is aimed to engage a wide audience of mixed aerospace and non-aerospace industry background and will be presented in a simplified and practical manner to allow the practicing professional to understand the various aspect of V/STOL design that has driven the recent innovations seen in aircraft such as the Bell-Boeing V-22 and the Lockheed Martin F-35B.

COURSE FEES (Sign-In To Register)
– AIAA Member Price: $895 USD
– Non-Member Price: $1095 USD
– AIAA Student Member Price: $495 USD

CLASSROOM HOURS / CEUs: 16 classroom hours / 1.6 CEU/PDH

CANCELATION POLICY: A refund less a $50.00 cancellation fee will be assessed for all cancellations made in writing prior to 5 days before the start of the event. After that time, no refunds will be provided.

CONTACT: Please contact Lisa Le or Customer Service if you have any questions about the course or group discounts (for 5+ individuals).

Frequently Asked Questions

Outline

OUTLINE

• Propulsion Systems:
  • Fans
  • Rotors
  • Ejectors
  • Lift Fans
  • Lift Engines
  • Inlets
  • Nozzles / Exhaust Systems
  • Electric propulsion
• Powered Lift Aerodynamics:
  • Hover and Suckdown
  • Ground effects and Fountain Jets
  • Conversion and the Jet Flap effect
  • Short Takeoff vs. VTO
• Environmental Effects:
  • Outwash and ground vortices
  • Near-field and far-field Hot Gas Ingestion
  • Ground erosion and spalling
  • Shipboard operations and challenges
  • Acoustics and Noise
• Flight testing, ground testing:
  • Instrumentation, equipment
  • Stands, tethers, hover pits
  • Wind tunnel, Thrust measuring rigs
• Integrated Flight/Propulsion Controls:
  • Stability & Control / Control Power
  • Propulsion Controls
  • Flying Qualities / Handling Qualities
  • Use of Simulation
• Pilot Vehicle Interface – How to design for the Human, Reduce Costs and Transform Safety:
  • Control Inceptors
  • Pilot-vehicle interface
  • Automation and the minimization of human error
• Rotorcraft and Tiltrotors:
  • Early tilt rotors
  • Tilt-rotor research and progress
  • Tilt rotor ground and flight testing
  • Tilt rotor aerodynamics and flight mechanics
  • Operational challenges of tilt rotors
  • The future of tilt rotors
• Case Studies:
  • Hunting H.126, YC-14, YC-15, C-17, and Ball-Bartoe JW-1 Jetwing
  • Electra Goldfinch and EL9
  • Soviet V/STOL Aircraft – Yakovlev Yak-36, Yak-38 and Yak-141
  • German V/STOL Aircraft – Dornier Do-31, VFW VAK191, EWR VJ101
  • Hawker Siddeley P.1127, Kestrel and Harrier
  • Lockheed Martin X-35B and F-35B
  • Bell X-22A

Materials

COURSE DELIVERY AND MATERIALS

• The course lectures will be delivered via Zoom. Access to the Zoom classroom will be provided to registrants near to the course start date.
• All sessions will be available on-demand within 1-2 days of the lecture. Once available, you can stream the replay video anytime, 24/7.
• All slides will be available for download after each lecture. No part of these materials may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted, unless for course participants. All rights reserved.
• Between lectures during the course, the instructor(s) will be available via email for technical questions and comments.

Instructors

Paul Bevilaqua

Dr. Paul Bevilaqua is a retired Lockheed Martin engineer who played a leading role in creating the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. He invented the propulsion system that enabled the building of a supersonic STOVL fighter and showed that conventional and naval variants could be developed to create a common, affordable aircraft for all three services. As Chief Engineer of the Skunk Works, he led the engineering team that proved the feasibility of building this aircraft. Before joining Lockheed Martin, he was Manager of Advanced Programs at Rockwell International’s Navy aircraft plant, where he led the design of VSTOL interceptor and transport aircraft. He began his career as an Air Force officer at Wright Patterson AFB, where he developed a powered lift system for VSTOL Search and Rescue Aircraft. He is an AIAA Fellow and a Member of the NAE. He was awarded the Guggenheim Medal, the Collier Trophy, AIAA and SAE Aircraft Design Awards, and AIAA and VFS VSTOL Awards. He earned a BSc in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and a PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Purdue University. He was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Cranfield in Britain.

Erasmo Piñero Jr.

Mr. Piñero has over 35 years of aircraft operations, systems integration, and flight test experience. After graduating from the University of Florida as an Aerospace Engineer, he joined the United States Navy, as a Naval Flight Officer. Mr. Piñero is also a Space Defense Specialist and served in the U.S. Naval Space Command. At the completion of his military service, he joined Sikorsky Aircraft where he worked on the S-76, Blackhawk, Comanche, and S-92 helicopters. Early in the X-35 Joint Strike Fighter demonstration program, he served as a Test Engineer on the X-35’s engine ground test development. He officially joined Lockheed Martin in 2002, to continue working on the F-35 JSF program. He has been associated with Bell Textron since 2012 and he is currently the R & D Chief Engineer at Airborne Tactical Advantage Company (ATAC), another Textron company. Between 2012 and 2022, he was a subject matter expert on the propulsion systems of the Bell V-22, V-280 tilt-rotors and other Bell rotorcraft products. Mr. Piñero completed his postgraduate studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. His professional affiliations include the Vertical Flight Society, AIAA V/STOL Systems Technical Committee, and the Society of Flight Test Engineers. He is currently an Associate Fellow of the AIAA.

Mike Hirschberg

Mike Hirschberg has been the Vertical Flight Society (VFS) Director of Strategy since June 2023, after 12 years as the Executive Director. Founded in 1943, VFS is the global technical society dedicated to advancing vertical flight. Prior to joining VFS in 2011, he worked for 20 years in aerospace, primarily in vertical flight. Mike was previously a principal aerospace engineer with CENTRA Technology (now part of Amentum), providing technical and program management support to DARPA and the Office of Naval Research on advanced aircraft and rotorcraft concepts. In 1994–2001, he worked in the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Program Office, supporting the development of the X-32 and X-35 vertical flight propulsion systems.Mike has also served as the Managing Editor or Editor in Chief of the VFS Vertiflite magazine since 1999, and has been a contributing author since 1997, and is the author/co-author of hundreds of articles and papers, as well as two books. Mike holds a BS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Virginia (1991), a Master of Mechanical Engineering from Catholic University of America (1996) and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Virginia Tech (2013). He is a Fellow of AIAA and the Royal Aeronautical Society.

Chris Courtin

Chris Courtin is Director of Technology Development at Electra, where he leads the development and ongoing flight test campaign of Electra’s EL2 Goldfinch hybrid-electric blown lift ultra short takeoff and landing demonstrator aircraft. He also leads the flight physics team developing the EL9 9-passenger aircraft. Chris earned a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his research focused on how distributed electric propulsion enables the development of super-short takeoff and landing aircraft with specific focus on blown lift aerodynamics, vehicle design optimization and flight controls. Prior to Electra and MIT, Chris was a research engineer at Aurora Flight Sciences working on advanced commercial transport design, eVTOL concepts, and small UAS.

Tom Arledge

Tom Arledge is an aerospace engineer with a background in aerodynamics, vehicle design, and testing. He has over 30 years of experience with aircraft conceptual design and optimization codes, wind tunnel testing, flight testing, and aircraft technology development. His experience in V/STOL includes small-, large-, and full-scale testing to investigate hover and transition aerodynamics, jet effects, ground environment, and acoustics. As part of NASA Ames’ Advanced Aircraft and Powered-Lift Branch, he supported various programs from concept through their test and evaluation phase. This work has included testing in the NASA Ames 80×120 ft. WT, 40×80 ft. WT, 11 ft. Transonic WT, and the 9×7 ft. Supersonic WT as well as testing with aircraft on the Multi-Axis Thrust Stand and at the NAS Patuxent River Hover Pit. He currently serves as a Senior Systems Engineer in the NASA Ames Chief Engineer’s Office. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Ohio Northern University and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Virginia Tech.

Bill Norton

William J. Norton is retired from a flight test engineering career that spanned 40 years, including 20 as a US Air Force officer. He held numerous positions in many organizations on dozens of aerospace programs spanning all aircraft types. He led flight test teams on several programs across many years including modifications of existing designs and entirely new aircraft that included the V-22 Osprey. He has penned scores of technical papers, 20 books, and a multitude of magazine articles, many touching on STOL and VSTOL subjects. While an officer, Bill wrote the Structure Flight Test Handbook, the first book of its kind focusing on this subject. Bill taught at National Test Pilot School, where he served on staff, and the USAF Test Pilot School. Bill holds a Masters in Aeronautical Engineering and has taught courses at the graduate level. Bill is a civil pilot with numerous ratings and has held jobs as a professional pilot supporting flight test. Bill has been honored as a Fellow of the Society of Flight Test Engineers. He restored and operated a DHC-1 Chipmunk, and built and flight-tested a Rutan Long-EZ.

Justin Paines

Educated at Oxford and MIT, Justin Paines joined the RAF in 1988. After training, he was posted to No 1 (Fighter) Squadron, flying Harrier aircraft. He attended USAF TPS Class 95A, before starting his test flying career at Boscombe Down with principal responsibility for the VAAC experimental fly-by-wire aircraft. He flew all marks of X-35 throughout the JSF Concept Demonstration program, before returning to the VAAC Harrier program in 2004, to refine the Unified Flight Control concept for the F-35B and developing the Ship Rolling Vertical Landing. He served as an instructor at the Empire Test Pilot School, including 2 years as Chief Flying Instructor, and joined Joby Aviation as chief test pilot in 2018. In 2021 he returned to the UK as Chief Test Pilot and Assistant Chief Engineer at Vertical Aerospace in Bristol, before leaving Vertical in October 2024 to cofound his own engineering company, Flyer AI, to build and operate autonomous aircraft. Flyer is actively developing small package delivery aircraft.

Greg Walker

Gregory Walker is a distinguished aerospace engineer with a career rooted in groundbreaking advancements in flight control systems, propulsion integration, and aircraft simulation. As the former Senior Manager of Vehicle Systems for the F-35 program, Mr. Walker was instrumental in shaping the Integrated Flight Propulsion Controls, with a particular focus on STOVL (Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing) control laws and propulsion system integration. A proud graduate of Purdue University, where he earned a B.S. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Mr. Walker later obtained his M.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington, specializing in control system design and analysis.

Francesco Giannini

Francesco Giannini has been an Aircraft Configurator for the past 18 years at Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing subsidiary. There, he worked on a variety advanced concepts including several V/STOL vehicles like the Pegasus eVTOL, and DARPA’s XV-24 and SPRINT. Francesco a BS and a MS in Aerospace Engineering from CalPoly San Luis Obispo (2006). He volunteers as a docent at the National Air and Space Museum annex in Chantilly, VA, and is currently an Associate Fellow of the AIAA.