e-Go is the creation of Giotto Castelli and Tony Bishop, who both live in Cambridge, UK. They are assisted by a small army of local organisations and expert volunteers who contribute energy and expertise to speed the project along. Together they built and now operate a Dyn’Aero MCR01 BanBi (G-DECO) – the most fun and performance they could find from 100hp. It's flown all over Europe and North Africa.

Tony is CEO and looks after business strategy, organisation and marketing. He was an aeronautical engineer (some decades ago….) initially in the Future Projects Office at Hawker Siddeley Hatfield (where airbuses, 146s and VTOL civil planes were being invented) and later at British Aerospace Civil Division HQ, Kingston. After involvement in an early Cambridge start-up, he worked with many companies on the introduction of radical products.

Giotto is CTO and Chief Designer, and is responsible for design. He’s a practising aeronautical engineer with recent experience at Marshall Aerospace, Magellan, Pilatus and J&C Engineering. So he’s worked on a wide variety of modern aircraft including the Horizon bizjet, the Pilatus PC-21 advanced trainer and the airbus 340 and 380.

Here are some of the people and organisations currently contributing to the project:

Rob Martin has recently started working for us full-time as Production Manager. He's an expert in composite manufacture. Previously he supervised a UAV production line at Lola Composites. In his spare time he loves extreme sports, especially skydiving.

Juan Tobon Conde is working with us part-time, focussing on translating designs intoproduction information. From Columbia, he did a BSc in Aeronautical engineering at San Buenaventura University in Bogota, completed an MSc in Aerospace Vehicle Design at Cranfield University, and is now doing a PhD there. He focuses on producing pattern designs and production instructions.

Malcolm Bird is chairman of our board. He's a succesful serial entrepreneur, technical director and angel investor. He must be the world's most hands-on 'non-executive' director, playing a key role in everything from disaster recovery to network installation, evaluating avionics suppliers and building engine test rigs! He flies his Sports Cruiser as well as a Rotorway helicopter that he built from a kit.

Stella Bird (married to Malcolm) has become our indispensible administrator, installing and operating financial systems as well as leading our future facilities search and much else. A retired GP, we've unfortunately made good use of her past skills as well!

Nicolas Louis is an intern working in the design team. He comes from Montpellier (on the Mediterranean), and is a 3rd year student at the French Institute for Advanced Mechanics in Clermont-Ferrand. He's a glider and paraglider pilot, and has already worked on several light aircraft projects. He's working on fuselage design, especially the cockpit and canopy.

Abel Hartwig is also an intern working on design. He's a Hungarian mechanical engineering student at the Budapest University of Technology. He's into keeping fit and playing the cello. He's working on the undercarriage, wing fairings and engine cowl.

Vianney Mantel is our 3rd intern working on design. He's from Aix en Provence (sandwiched between the Med and the Alps) in France, and is doing a Masters degree in engineering at ENSMM in Besancon. He enjoys gliding, as well as the usual French sports (rugby, volley-ball and skiing). He's focused on the avionics and flight test instrumentation.

Mike Gregory is a retired RAF engineering officer, who’s been working with us as a volunteer since early 2010, building a wide variety of test pieces, tools, facilities and prototype parts. He part owns a Robin and will return to building his Europa when we let him!

John Kinser has been working with us as a volunteer for some months, but is now working for us full-time on building the prototype. He's from Texas, married to a Brit, and has spent many years leading maintenance teams in the USAF (recently in East Anglia). He instructs many forms of modern dance - anyone for a Salsa?

Iain Young MBE is our first test pilot. He trained as a test pilot at the Empire Test Pilots' School, becoming a Principal Tutor there. He then moved via Britten Norman to Marshall Aerospace, where he became Chief Test Pilot. He's also a kight aircraft instructor and examiner, and flies a Robin. He's accumulated 10,000 hours on 100 aeroplane and helicopter types.

AVM John Brownlow is our second test pilot. Also a graduate of the Empire Test Pilots’ School, his service career was mainly spent in research and development, and as a test pilot at Farnborough and Boscombe Down. After the RAF John joined Marshall Aerospace at Cambridge and became Airport and Flight Operations Director. He's been a gliding instructor, powered flight instructor, and PPL Examiner, and has been test flying amateur-built aircraft since the early 1990s.

Martino Felchero is an aeronautical engineer with Bombardier in Montreal. He’s had experience at Bella Aviation (CFM Shadow) and Marshall Aerospace, where he worked on the Honda Bizjet. In his spare time, he’s helping with the finite element (FE) analysis of various parts and contributing to the structural design.

Lola Cars have donated CFD services, particularly aimed at ensuring that the cooling of our Rotron Wankel works well. Phil Tiller has completed several analysis cycles, helping us refine the wing tip and canard aerodynamics as well as the engine cooling system. Phil’s also building a Europa.

Shane Slater runs his own environmental consultancy in Cambridge, but has found time to build a 1/3 scale radio controlled test vehicle; our 'mini e-Go'. This will be used to test handling, and especially the low speed handling - to ensure that we never get a main wing stall.

Keith Setchell is a retired UAV test pilot and very experienced radio control modeller. He's flight-testing the mini e-Go.

Trelleborg have sponsored us with the supply of epoxy pattern materials - a major help in our prototype programme. The high quality material has an exceptional finish after mating; it requires hardly any preparation before laying up moulds.

Three students of animation at Bournemouth University are working on a promo-video. They're using the CAD model at the core of this and laying it on live flight video.

Peter Mather has built the extensive flight test instrumentation. We plan to include measurement of various pressures, temperatures, strains (via strain gauges in important parts of the structure), and visual recording of tufts in areas of potential flow separation. All this information will be recorded for post-flight analysis, and hopefully sent instantly via a radio link to the ground crew. Peter flies an RV9a and is building a Tailwind.

And these guys have helped us in the past:

Colin Boyd owns Core Composites, and machines components for F1 racing car teams. In his spare time (!) he machined patterns for the e-Go. He’s into fearsome boy-racers, a Hawker Hunter, restoring a Rutan aircraft and learning to fly.

Aditi Vykarnam worked with us during the summer as an intern. She’s done a major upgrade of the simulator, as we’ve made significant changes to both the aerodynamics and physical shape since the original version.

Matt Reynolds worked full-time with us for a year as an intern. He’s completed three of four years of a course in Aerospace Engineering at Belfast University. Most of his time was spent building the prototype, and he’s also our specialist on coaxing very accurate foam components from our CNC hot-wire machine. At weekends, he’s likely to be gliding.

Jordan Pelovitz is an industrial design student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, NY (USA). He came over as an intern for the summer of 2010 to work on the design of the cockpit. He went though concept studies to a 3D model and finished up with a complete cockpit mock-up.

Simon Kober is a Swiss aeronautical student who worked with us in spring 2010, when we were building and testing the first wing.

Roy Twigg spent a year working with us on the prototype build in the early days. Roy flies a Robin from Main Hall Farm, so we see him regularly when the flying weather’s good.

Henry Dale makes corporate videos and does viral marketing. He’s also an adventurer, having rowed the Atlantic and climbed Kilimanjaro - he needs challenges! Recently he volunteered to make a series of podcasts of the project which will keep our growing community better informed and create a valuable video archive. He’s also working on a new version of this web-site.

Mike Dixon is a retired military and civil (747) pilot, who flies light aircraft, enjoys gliding, enjoys building houses and has a well-equipped workshop. Through gliding, he knows just how trailers should be made to make one-man rigging easy. He’s spent time with us working on the prototype wings.

Roger Peirse is also ex-RAF, has built two planes and currently flies a Zenair. Now semi-retired, he’s worked with us regularly at the e-Go Centre.

Clive Steer is an engineer working on vacuum systems, so he’s been a fund of knowledge on the vacuum system for our composite curing facility. He also flies, builds and restores small aircraft and has machine tools at home. He’s machined components for the wind tunnel model and sourced vital vacuum pumps.

Hal Parfitt-Murray is a fiddler and composer who creates fantastic aircraft concepts using x-plane in his spare time. He beautified our correct, but functional x-plane simulation model with a beautiful 3D cockpit and external shape.

Paulo Vidal has spent 10 years working on automotive structures (especially for exotic cars) and particularly crash worthiness. He optimised the wing structure again using FE techniques. He’s keen to do a complete crash analysis of e-Go!!!

Maurizio Chedid worked at Vulcanair in Naples on the P68 and at Marshall Aerospace on C130s. He’s helping us sort out structural testing procedures when his MSc at Cranfield allows.

Wind tunnel work was conducted by Tom Shearn (a 4th year student in Cambridge University’s Engineering Department) and his supervisor Dr Holger Babinski. He conducted the tests on a 0.225 scale model for his final year project. This allowed us to examine flow near the stall at full Reynolds number. He joined in building the model (now knows how to make carbon fibre components for his mountain bike!) and conducted three weeks of tests in the tunnel.

Mark Wakefield was also a 4th year student. Supervised by Professor Bill Dawes, he used the latest computer techniques (computational flow dynamics) to analyse the flow around the aircraft in 3D. He modelled the tunnel experiment to correlate those tests with the CFD results, as well as modelling full scale flows in free air.

Several young engineers from Marshall Aerospace (Andrew Hegg, Chris Miller and Dan Barker) have helped us with the early design and build. Andrew is a flight dynamics engineer with Marshalls, who was involved with the A400M flying test bed on flutter testing and ground vibration testing. He’s also a keen model aircraft builder. Chris is an avionics engineer who has built several ultra-lightweight racing dinghies using carbon fibre and foam.