01 — Project & Team
Project & Team.
FlyONSPEED is an all-volunteer 501(c)(3) building aural angle-of-attack systems for experimental aircraft. Nine team members. An EAA Founder's Innovation Prize and a Grand Championship. Three generations of hardware across seven years of flight test.
02 — Mission
A nonprofit project building aural angle-of-attack systems for experimental aircraft.
FlyONSPEED, Incorporated is a Florida 501(c)(3) public charity. Donations are tax-deductible. The team is unpaid. Hardware sales and donations cover parts, tooling, flight test, and the cost of producing the next generation of boards. Nobody draws a salary.
The firmware is open source. The calibration tools are open source. Hardware design files aren't open yet — that's the direction we're heading.
Legal
FlyONSPEED, Incorporated
EIN 83-2140220
Florida Document N18000010659
1202 Windward Circle
Niceville, FL 32578
03 — Recognition
An EAA Founder's Innovation Prize and a Grand Championship, judged by people who built the experimental aviation industry.
"This system is caveman simple to learn. It's like flying with a flight instructor all the time."
— 2018 EAA Founder's Innovation Prize judging panel
2018
EAA Founder's Innovation Prize. $25,000.
Awarded at AirVenture Oshkosh. Judging panel: Dick VanGrunsven (founder, Van's Aircraft), Pat Anderson, Gregory Feith, Dave Morss, and Charlie Precourt. The Gen 1 entry was roughly $250 in components, ten ounces, and installable in any aircraft with an electrical system.
2021
Grand Championship. $50,000.
Awarded to the strongest entry across the prize's first three years. The Gen 2 system competed against Airball and Solar Pilot Guard and took the championship.
04 — Press
Coverage.
FLYING · Garrison
Kitplanes · Jan 2024
NBC26 · 2021
AVweb · 2021
05 — Team
Nine volunteers. Fighter pilots, flight test engineers, software leads, hardware designers.
Project lead
Mike "Vac" Vaccaro
Retired USAF Lt. Colonel. F-4 and F-15 pilot. Fighter Weapons School graduate and instructor. Currently a CFII/ME. Flies a Van's RV-4.
Hardware and HUD
Cecil "Tron" Jones
USAF retired. Fifteen years on F-35 avionics and Combined Test Bed flight test. Leads the TronView HUD project. Flies a Van's RV-8.
Software and flight test
Lenard "Lenny" Iszak
Software lead for the OnSpeed firmware. Flies a Van's RV-10.
Flight test instrumentation
Bob Baggerman
Aircraft electrician. Builds the test instrumentation rigs and processes flight test data.
Avionics and integration
Christopher Jones
Avionics integration and test. Flies a Van's RV-6A.
PCB hardware design
Philip Starbuck
Designed the Gen2v4 board and the Gen 3 hardware.
Energy display
Vern Little
Designs and tests the energy-management visual display. Flies a Harmon Rocket.
Flight test
Brian Chesteen
Flight test pilot. Flies a Van's RV-7.
Software and infrastructure
Sam Ritchie
Software lead. Builds tooling, calibration analysis, and the data pipeline. Flies a Van's RV-10.
06 — Project history
Three generations of hardware. Seven years of flight test.
Gen 1 · 2018
Arduino Due. Proof of concept.
Read AOA from a Dynon EFIS over a serial link and generated tones in software. Roughly $250 in components, ten ounces, and installable in any aircraft with an electrical system. Won the 2018 EAA Founder's Innovation Prize. The lesson from Gen 1 was calibration: angle of attack is meaningless without an aircraft-specific calibration curve, and the rest of the project has been built around that fact.
Gen 2 · 2019–2024
Teensy. Standalone sensors.
Differential pressure for AOA and pitot, absolute pressure for static, attitude reference. 32 MB onboard log. The V3 board was through-hole and hand-assembled by builders; the V4 board was surface-mount with dual IMUs. The system measured AOA within half a degree at 40 samples per second. Won the EAA Grand Championship in 2021.
Production stalled when the Teensy supply chain went sideways during COVID and never recovered to volumes the project needed.
Gen 3 · 2025–
ESP32-S3. WiFi calibration wizard.
Three Honeywell HSC pressure sensors, integrated IMU, FreeRTOS multitasking, web-based calibration wizard. First production run targets AirVenture 2026.
TronView HUD
A separate but related project led by Cecil "Tron" Jones. Raspberry Pi 5, XREAL AR glasses, Python software. Displays AOA and EFIS data on a heads-up display.
07 — Get involved
Three concrete ways to participate.
Code
Read the source.
Firmware is MIT-licensed and on GitHub. Hardware design files aren't open yet.
Test
Install one.
If you fly experimental or are building one, tell us about your aircraft and join the waitlist for the first production run.
Donate
Fund the next board.
FlyONSPEED, Incorporated is a 501(c)(3). Contributions are tax-deductible. Donations cover parts, tooling, and flight test.
FlyONSPEED
501(c)(3) nonprofit · EIN 83-2140220
1202 Windward Circle
Niceville, FL 32578