Search Results for : motorglider

Anyone still in doubt that we’re in the midst of the birth of electric flight need look no further than this story, just posted today on the online tech zine Gizmag.Pascal Chretien, an enterprising electrical/aerospace engineer and chopper pilot, made the world’s first fully electric helicopter flight in the prototype he designed and built almost entirely by himself… in just 12 months! Hang glider and ultralight trike pilots will delight in hearing a weight shift control system is involved. *** For me, the big story here is once again we see that innovation lives, not just in megabuck corporate and government R&D departments but in the garages of individual megabrains as well…as it always has and we can expect always will.Chretien, in making his 2 minute, 10 second test eggbeater flight, threw whipped eggs in Sikorsky’s face since that aviation giant’s well-funded electric project, in development for some time now, has yet to fly.

Stephan Boutenko has a big vision…and he’s taking it to E-street. *** Anyone familiar with Bend, Oregon’s Lance Niebauer, the successful Los Angeles graphic artist who decided to design an airplane and spawned the highly successful Lancair series of homebuilts, which evolved into the production Cessna Columbia composite four-seater, should check out another Oregonian with a big dream: Stephan Boutenko. *** He’s boldly going directly to the internet for public contributions to fund his electric S-LSA. The company name is Alternair, and the airplane is simply called the Amp — perhaps an unintentional play on the word imp, because it is a cute little thing…but with big dreams in its electric heart. *** A professional pilot and Embry Riddle grad with an Professional Aeronautical design degree, Boutenko hopes to progress the current electric-powered aircraft technology beyond demonstration-style or exotic motorglider models. *** The Amp, still in the design stages, will perform comparably to the current crop of gasoline-powered LSA…at as little as 80% lower direct operating costs.

After my own Labors of Hercules, I arrived at the EAA Oshkosh Airventure seasonal highpoint event Tuesday mid day. Since it was a beautiful day by anybody’s standards, I decided not to brave the hordes at the show and headed out, once I got settled in my digs for the week, to a lovely little airport named Brennand about 10 minutes northwest of EAA’s Wittman Field show grounds. *** I was in luck with more than just weather: the San Antonio Light Sport Aircraft (SALSA) gang from Texas was there demo-flying its all-composite Pipistrel Virus SW 80/100, tricycle-gear (there’s also a taildragger version), composite touring motorglider. *** The Pipistrel line includes several designs I have admired from afar but not had the opportunity to share air with. *** All that changed when Salsa’s prime mover and shaker Rand Vollmer introduced me to a big, friendly Texican fella named Dave White.

A crack team of aeronautical whizbrains in the Institute of Aircraft Design at the University of Stuttgart, Germany has just passed its second important milestone in less than two months: its electric aircraft eGenius just flew more than two hours at more than 100 mph. *** Not by coincidence, that’s exactly the kind of performance that will be required to take $1.3 million top prize in the recently postponed (until September 25) CAFE Green Flight Challenge.  *** The GFC will award the prize money to the aircraft that can fly 200 miles at greater than 100 mph on the equivalent of one gallon of gas per occupant. The per occupant proviso is significant…and EGenius carries two people, so it can use enough batteries to store two gallons worth of energy.  *** That’s a lot of batteries given the current relative inefficiency of energy storage of batts vs.