Claridge to speak at inventors meeting
JD Claridge, founder of xCraft, a flying drone start-up that originated in Sandpoint, will be speaking at Wednesday’s meeting of the Inventors Association of Idaho meeting. The meeting begins at 2 p.m. at the auditorium on the second floor of the Columbia Bank building, 414 Church.
SANDPOINT — Fly on in to next week’s Inventors Association of Idaho meeting as the group hosts JD Claridge, founder of xCraft, a flying drone start-up that originated in Sandpoint.
Claridge will be speaking at the Wednesday meeting, which begins at 2 p.m. at the auditorium on the second floor of the Columbia Bank building, 414 Church.
Claridge is the CEO and co-founder of xCraft, a leading drone company developing innovative vehicles for the UAV market. Born with a passion for flight, Claridge said building and crashing flying toys throughout his youth taught him much about the science and art of flight vehicle design. He once built a (mostly) functional hang glider at the age of 7 and convinced his best friend to test fly it.
Claridge got his degree in aerospace engineering, and got his pilot and mechanic licenses for aircraft. He worked in command aviation for most of his career, recently working for Quest Aircraft Company in Sandpoint as the lead electrical and avionics engineer for eight years. Through all that, he became a designated engineering representative with the FAA, allowing him to sign off on designs for the FAA, as a type of consultant.
He started Aero Designworks about four years ago, offering consulting work for aviation and aerospace design. He has always been into remote control aircraft and drones for fun, and he came up with the design for the X PlusOne. He brought it into Aero Designworks as a side project, before connecting up with xCraft co-founder Charles Manning.
In October 2015, the pair were featured on ABC’s “Shark Tank”, making history by negotiating an unprecedented deal with all five Sharks. This catapulted xCraft into the center of the public spotlight and made household names out of xCraft’s launch products; PhoneDrone Ethos and X PlusOne.
With Claridge at the helm, xCraft continues to engineer innovation into the DNA of every flying machine it produces.
The community is invited to attend the IAI meeting and learn more about xCraft and about how Claridge invented his innovative drones.