Carter Aviation Technologies has completed a long-awaited move to a new facility in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Since 1994 Carter has been housed in two small industrial buildings that accommodated their machine and composite shops and a small fabrication area. Both buildings encompassed less than 3,000 square feet of work area and for most of the last 15 years the administration and engineering offices were housed in a mobile office totaling 600 sq. ft.
According to President Jay Carter, Jr., “We started out as a very small R&D company with just a couple of employees while we investigated the viability of our slowed rotor/compound (SR/CTM) technology. We grew very little in those years because we were in a design/test phase of individual components. Even when we began flight-testing our first aircraft it was a test platform and we spent much more time improving and retesting systems and parts. Plus, we had a very limited amount of funding so we had to be frugal on where we spent our money and creative in our development and testing. A large facility just wasn’t a priority.”
Carter has entered into two licensing agreements for use of its technology over the last 18 months and is entering the final phase of flight-testing with its second generation proof-of-concept aircraft. With a final design being readied for commercialization, Carter is looking to the future. “We now need to build four aircraft over the next 12 to 18 months and that would have been impossible in our original facility,” Carter said. “An Economic Development Program with the city of Wichita Falls helped us acquire this new 20,000 square foot facility. It is a huge step forward. It provides us with 16,000 square feet of shop space and 4,000 square feet of engineering and office space. That should hold us for a couple more years.”
For more information: CarterAviationTechnologies.com
