Inaugural
Flight of the HALO-Proteus™
Promises Low-Cost, High-Speed Communications for
Business
Flight puts Angel One Step Closer to Delivering Low-Cost Wireless
Communications
MOJAVE, CA (September 22, 1998) – Several hundred people from the
communications industry traveled to the desert north of Los Angeles this morning to
witness what can become a dramatic breakthrough in wireless communications. Joining
executives from Angel Technologies, Wyman-Gordon Company [Nasdaq:WYMN], Scaled Composites
and Raytheon Systems Company (NYSE: RTNA, RTNB), the assembled crowd watched the first
public flight of the HALO-Proteus™ high altitude aircraft, uniquely designed to
provide wireless communications services to metropolitan cities worldwide.
"The Inaugural Flight of the HALO-Proteus marks a major milestone toward the
fulfillment of our vision to deliver low cost wireless communications services at a time
when demand for interactive connectivity is growing at an unprecedented rate," said
Marc Arnold, Chairman and CEO, Angel Technologies. "We congratulate Burt Rutan and
his talented team at Scaled Composites on this special occasion."
The attendees watched the HALO-Proteus aircraft take off, climb at a steep angle and
perform a variety of maneuvers demonstrating the plane’s unique capabilities. The
plane was piloted by Mike Melvill, Proteus Chief Test Pilot, and Peter Siebold, Proteus
Flight Test Engineer, Scaled Composites.
"The plane performed flawlessly", Melvill said following the flight. "It
can climb at 4,000 feet-per-minute, handles beautifully and takes off and lands easily. It
is remarkably stable and will be well suited to the Angel HALO mission as a reliable
communications platform. We couldn’t be more pleased."
"Given the business requirements proposed by Angel, we designed an aircraft for
economical and reliable access to the stratosphere," said Burt Rutan, president,
Scaled Composites and designer of the aircraft. "The Proteus has long thin wings like
our Voyager round-the-world plane, but the similarity stops there. The Proteus’
strong structure can withstand more G-force than a typical business jet. It has been
designed from the start to be robust and reliable."
"I’ve been around aircraft of all kinds. The Proteus is truly unique,"
commented Allan McArtor, former FAA Administrator and senior executive at Federal Express.
"The HALO-Proteus has the potential to open a whole new segment of aviation, the
carriage of data instead of people or cargo."
The HALO-Proteus aircraft, named for the Greek god able to change its physical form at
will, is a High Altitude Long Operation (HALO™) aircraft which sports a canard wing,
an interchangeable center fuselage and twin fan jet engines.
"HALO-Proteus can carry a communications payload larger than typical satellites
and provide them with more than 25 Kilowatts of power. The aircraft will form the apex of
Angel Technologies’ HALO Network™," said Angel’s Chief Technology
Officer, Nicholas J. Colella.
"We are designing a network capable of delivering 16 Gigabits per second of
capacity directly over the center of a large metropolitan center," noted Angel’s
President, Peter H. Diamandis. "Our current plans are to deploy the HALO Network over
Los Angeles in 2000. Businesses in LA will be able to gain access to the Internet or their
corporate LAN at data rates ranging from 1 to 10 Megabits per second at a fraction of
today’s prices."
About Angel Technologies
Angel Technologies Corporation, with headquarters in St. Louis, Mo., is a
privately-held wireless communications company using proprietary High Altitude Long
Operation (HALO) aircraft to deliver services worldwide. Augmenting terrestrial towers and
orbiting satellites, Angel's HALO aircraft will fly fixed patterns in the stratosphere
over major cities to deliver metropolitan wireless services at lower cost, with increased
flexibility and improved quality of service. Teamed with corporate partners, Angel will
deliver a variety of fixed and mobile wireless services including voice, data and video.
The HALO Network will enable individual consumers and businesses to send and receive data
at multi-megabit per second rates. It will be replicated over metropolitan centers
throughout the world.
The HALO-Proteus aircraft has been designed to provide the commercial communication
industry a reliable alternative infrastructure that can be deployed instantly, even when
terrestrial infrastructure is missing or incomplete. Applications that will benefit most
from the availability of airborne deployment will be new broadband data services in
developed countries and wireless telephony services in the developing world. Equipped with
suitable payloads, HALO-Proteus aircraft will deliver high-capacity, high-quality services
while positioned 10 miles above metropolitan regions. The HALO-Proteus aircraft with its
payload will create a cellular pattern covering an area comparable to several hundred
cellular towers.
About Wyman-Gordon Company
Wyman-Gordon Company [Nasdaq:WYMN] is a leading manufacturer of high-quality,
technologically-advanced forgings, investment castings and composite structures for use in
the commercial and defense aerospace, commercial power and energy, and performance product
markets. Additional information can be found at website: http://www.wyman-gordon.com
About Scaled Composites
Scaled Composites, Inc. is an aerospace and specialty composites development company
located in Mojave, California (about 80 miles north of Los Angeles). Founded in 1982 by
Burt Rutan, Scaled has a broad experience in air vehicle design, tooling, and
manufacturing, specialty composite structure design, analysis and fabrication, and
developmental flight test. Scaled is a subsidiary of the Wyman-Gordon Company, North
Grafton, Massachusetts. Additional information can be found at website:
http://www.scaled.com
NOTE TO EDITORS: Angel Technologies™, HALO™, HALO-Proteus™, HALO
Network™ and Cone of Commerce™ are trademarks of Angel Technologies Corporation.
All other trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective companies.
This press release contains forward-looking statements made in reliance upon the safe
harbor of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward looking
statements involve a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties that could cause
actual results of the Company to differ materially from those matters expressed in or
implied by such forward-looking statements.
Contact:
Angel Technologies
Diane Murphy
Federal City Communications Corp.
Tel: 202/662-1280
Fax: 202/662-1281
EMail:
diane@broadband.com
For
Wyman-Gordon
Sanjay N. Shah, V.P. Corp. Strategy & Bus. Dev.,
508-839-8070
For
Scaled Composites
Kaye LaFebvre, 805/824-4541
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