Press Release 10/22/2026
Introducing Keelara Flight Systems and the Airplane Farm Harvest
From Keelara Flight Systems
Today we're opening Keelara Flight Systems, a new part of Keelara that builds aircraft for flight simulators. We take an aircraft designer's CAD and design data and turn it into an aircraft that flies in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. For engineering customers, we also build an engineering twin: a JSBSim flight-dynamics model of the aircraft that can grow with its flight-test program.
Our first aircraft is already flying: the Harvest CAV from The Airplane Farm.
Why fly an aircraft before it exists
Most independent aircraft designers we talk to are somewhere between a concept, a CAD model and a prototype, and many of them are raising money at the same time. A rendering shows what an aircraft looks like. A simulator shows what it does: taking off, transitioning, cruising over real scenery, seen from any angle or from the cockpit in VR.
That matters to the people a designer needs on side. Investors and buyers see the aircraft flying. Marketing gets real flight footage instead of renders. And the designer's own test pilots can fly the design and try ideas months before the real thing leaves the hangar.
We're clear about the limits. A simulator can't certify an aircraft or replace flight test. What it can do is put a design in front of people, and in front of its own pilots, long before first flight.
The Airplane Farm Harvest CAV
The Harvest CAV is an all-electric powered-lift aircraft designed by The Airplane Farm of Sparks, Nevada, and built on its Electric PowerWing (Patent Pending). It takes off and lands vertically or on a short field, the pilot flies lying prone, and the fly-by-wire controls are what the designer calls Simplified Flight Controls. The Harvest is in design, with prototype construction and initial testing underway.
Here is what we've built with The Airplane Farm so far:
- The aircraft in the simulator. The Harvest is built from the designer's CAD and flies in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 through every phase: vertical takeoff from the tail, transition to wing-borne flight, and landing.
- A custom HUD for a prone pilot. Hover, transition and cruise layouts, a terrain visor with terrain-clearance warnings, flight-path and energy displays, autoland and auto-takeoff guidance, and checklists.
- Automation. Auto level, auto-throttle, automatic takeoff and autoland in the simulator.
- A VR cockpit. The Harvest is flown in virtual reality on a Meta Quest 3.
- An engineering twin. A JSBSim model built from the designer's data runs inside the simulator about 480 times a second and flies the aircraft in place of the simulator's own flight model, with a fly-by-wire prototype that adds envelope protection.
