It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s … A Man Flying Around Major Cities on a Real-Life Hoverboard

Hunter Kowald is a name that you might not know but will probably hear about very soon, thanks to his giant drone-like vehicle, The SkySurfer. The young engineer grew up with a dream that many share, yet ultimately dismiss as impossible: flying through the air freely as if in some futuristic movie or video game. 

But as evidenced by his many viral social media videos, of a helmeted man soaring over New York City or Venice Beach on a real-life hoverboard, Kowald has made that dream a reality. Below, Kowald shares what it was like to design, develop and eventually fly his ground-breaking personal aircraft.

I was nine years old in the backseat of my parents’ car when I first started sketching some sort of hoverboard. I actually still have the drawings. My dad had a pilot’s license, and I would go on flights with him when I was young. I guess the idea was always somewhere in the back of my mind, and I always had a passion for flight. Later, as I studied mechanical engineering and mathematics, then worked in the industrial world doing design, the concept of building something like that became more real.

I truly started the process back in 2017, spending an incredible amount of time making it work on paper and crunching all the numbers. I wanted to build an ultralight aircraft powerful enough to carry a person through the sky. I went over everything a million times before trying to turn those calculations into real world results. I knew that I would only have one shot at doing the prototype right.

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