I think altium has taken over as the top tier commercial offering in this space.
I always disliked Orcad. Especially because cadence had excellent software that predated OrCAD, and for reasons that I cannot fathom chose to promote OrCAD after they acquired it instead of the better software.
Here's a specific example in the interface. If you wanted to draw a wire, the keyboard shortcut of the old software was 'w' but orcad required you to type 'ctrl + w'. Why are you forcing me to use control when w doesn't do anything on its own? It was filled with similar tiny annoyances that just slowed things down. (Admittedly, it's been years since that was my primary work, and free stuff is good enough for what I do now.) I sincerely hope that orcad has continued to improve over the years.
There are tons of free sim tools. 'Spice' (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) was a very early commercial sim. So many of the free ones use some variant of spice in their name. LTSpice, Qspice, etc.
Kicad is an excellent free schematic capture and simulation software.
The author posted this project on reddit a few days ago where they mentioned their motivation: "I have a coworker who is constantly talking about the glory days of ShadyUrl, but that website has been down for several years at this point, so I figured I would create an alternative."
The existing electric planes are designed to be trainers. They are primarily for takeoff and landing and flying in the pattern at an airport. Less than 1-hour endurance, and useful load that can barely accommodate two people.
I grew up believing many of the myths that this article addresses. So I'm hesitant to believe it entirely without verifying additional sources. In particular, this quote seems misleading:
> the U.S. Forest Service reports that kudzu occupies, to some degree, about 227,000 acres of forestland
I quickly verified this statistic. But I know that "forestland" is a specific category of land. What about non-forestland? How many acres of kudzu are there on land that is not considered forestland?
> experts estimate that kudzu covers another 500,000 acres in the South’s cities and suburbs
I found this statistic about 500,000 acres quoted in several places, but didn't find which experts came up with that number. Still, it was very quick to find double the acreage in one specific type of non-forestland.
That doesn't even begin to touch non-forestland countryside (i.e. non-city, non-suburb)
The US Forest Service estimates that kudzu adds 2,500 acres each year. US Department of Agriculture estimates that it spreads by 150,000 acres per year. I don't think this is a discrepancy, just that each agency is looking at specific land types and uses.
It seems like this article is seriously cherry picking data to make it seem like kudzu is less of an issue.
Have you engaged with the FAA yet? Even if you're going the experimental route, it's useful to have an active and ongoing dialog with them. And they are tremendously more receptive to working with companies on new technologies than they were 10 years ago. It's a different regulatory environment than you would have been dealing with at SpaceX.
It's also worth noting that if you own above a certain percentage of a company's stock, it's legally required to make your trades public.
Also interesting -- look at the trade volume during the big moves, like 3-June. There's no way retail investors are causing that much volume, especially when it's during pre-market and post-market trading hours.