Will Dubai Beat Everyone to Jetson World?

Dean Sigler Announcements, Batteries, Electric Aircraft Components, Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

What do you give the country that has everything?  Perhaps the world’s first aerial taxi service. An Excess of Riches Dubai is a fabulously rich country, with an air conditioned beach, the world’s largest shopping mall and an indoor ski center complete with a good base and a layer of powder.  Disappointingly, it’s only the third largest indoor skiing area in the world.  The largest is in the Netherlands, with the second largest in Germany.  At least those countries don’t have to overcome the desert’s heat to drop the temperature below freezing. Visitors to Dubai can be excused for wanting to commute between these tourist attractions in an equally extravagant way.  Buzzing down on them in an eHang 184 passenger-carrying drone will ensure a grand entrance.  An Associated Press report says the Dubai officials are already pushing forward on test flights. “Mattar al-Tayer, the head of Dubai’s Roads & Transportation Agency (RTA), announced plans to have the craft regularly flying at …

NASA’s Mark Moore Joins Uber

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You must really be somebody when Fortune Magazine notices you’re taking a new job.  Mark Moore is indeed somebody, and remarkably self-confident in leaving a 30-year NASA career to sign on to a startup – even if it is run by Uber.  He will be Director of Aviation for the on-demand ride company, tackling the problems inherent in taking such services into the third dimension. His decade-long work in electric propulsion for aircraft has led him to conceive of some interesting possibilities for Personal Air Vehicles, a term he engaged early.  His Puffin vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, for instance, seemed to use elements of Lockheed’s XFV-1 Pogo and Aerovironment’s Sky Tote – both tail sitters.  Ben Rich’s book, Skunk Works, details the problems pilots “faced” while trying to land the Pogo on its tail  lying on their backs and looking straight up. Moore’s design allowed the pilot to take off and land while standing upright, and then transitioning to …

SA Symposium 2017 – An April Festival of Electric Flight

Dean Sigler Announcements, Batteries, Electric Aircraft Components, Electric Aircraft Materials, Electric Powerplants, Fuel Cells, GFC, Hybrid Aircraft, Hydrogen Fuel, SAS, Solar Power, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

April 21 and 22, 2017, set your GPS for N 37° 31′ 20.84” W 122° 15′ 38.31” – the Hotel Pullman San Francisco Bay.  The refined and beautiful setting and four-star accommodations make a grand accompaniment to the story we will share. The story of the 2017 Sustainable Aviation Symposium includes the latest in aerodynamics, electric power and energy storage.  It’s a grand and sweeping review, told by talented intellects in the context of using the latest technology to help save the planet.  A few exemplars of the program highlight this year’s story, “ A Keynote Address from a Master Designer Tine Tomazic, Director of Research and Development for Pipistrel, created the G4 to win the 2011 Green Flight Challenge, the Alpha Electro Trainer, and the Hypstair hybrid speedster.  His pioneering forays into electric power have made him a leader in development of everything from airframes to instrumentation.  What will he come up with next?  He might share that at …

Mike Friend’s Hybrid Electric Solution

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Electric airplanes currently can give 15 or 20 minutes of intense aerobatics, or about an hour of more sedate cruising.  What if you had a lovely little airplane that invited flinging it about the sky, but you still wanted to visit distant places?  In 2005, Mike Friend owned a Silence Twister, a Spitfire-like single-seater registered as N787M, a nod to Mike’s employer, Boeing.  He thought about making it a hybrid craft. Waiting for Batteries An early effort around 2010 by a German company to electrify the Twister did not produce a surge of orders, and Mike presented a 2011 symposium feature on making a hybrid out of the Twister to reduce its fuel burn while retaining its frisky character.  That approach would have used a pod under the belly of the Twister, making it look like a fighter with an auxiliary fuel tank.  Aerobatics combined with long-range seemed like a potential winner. Cute as it was, the concept was still …

How Cheaply Can One Fly?

Dean Sigler Batteries, Electric Aircraft Components, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

How low(cost) can you go and still fly?   That question forms one of the pursuits of the Minimalist Airplane Study Group, hosted by William Rich on Yahoo Groups.  He may have found an answer that leads to several intriguing alternative uses for the type of electric powerplant described below.  Use of model aircraft components leads to a low-cost build, and judicious use of off-the-shelf parts from other hobbies keeps costs low and speeds up the development process. He points to a hack from Laserhacker.com, which uses a motor, controller, propeller batteries and connectors one might find at the local hobby shop.  This assemblage manages to fly a paramotor despite the small size of the motor and the relatively small size of the propeller. The Laserhacker link shows not only several videos (this has to be the most fun per dollar flying machine), but includes the parts list and pricing for everything but the final battery pack.  Components include 3D-printed items …

Hybrid Aircraft – Several Empowering Possibilities

Dean Sigler Electric Aircraft Components, Electric Powerplants, Hybrid Aircraft, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

While we wait (with increasing patience or impatience depending on our personalities) for the next round of battery developments to make pure electric airplanes a reality, hybrid possibilities abound.  The definition of “hybrid” might not be as coherent as those used for automobiles.  Some “hybrids in this entry allow extended letdowns following a primary engine failure.  In that case, the added electric motor/generator gives extra minutes to find a safe landing space.  While both motor and primary engine are operational, the system acts much like an automotive hybrid system, both motor and engine combining outputs for added power, or the electrical portion recharging batteries while the engine maintains cruise power. Some are more like automotive serial systems, an engine-driven generator charging batteries which power the propulsion motor.  Pipistrel, though the Hypstair project, has a 200-kilowatt (268-horsepower) unit ready for test flights in 2017, according to Tine Tomazic, Director of Research and Development. Several Flying Now Several years ago, Flight Design …

Flying (Quietly) Like a REAL Bird!

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Not Just an Academic Exercise Justin Jaworski, Lehigh University assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, writes, “From antiquity to Harry Potter, owls continue to captivate and mystify us. Perhaps owls’ most mysterious feat is their ability to fly silently, which enables them to both sneak up on prey and hunt on the wing using their ears alone. For over 80 years, silent owl flight has been linked to a set of unique plumage features, but only recently have the mechanisms to suppress the ‘swoosh’ noise from owl wings been addressed in earnest.” This suppression of noise ensures that prey hunted by owls never know what hits them.  The doves that frequent your editor’s deck, for instance, have no such noise-limiting features, and make quite a racket when the door opens for their morning feeding.  Likewise, a pair of Mallard Ducks who’ve decided to blend in with the small …

SolarStratos Unveils a High-flying Motorglider

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Raphael Domjan is an adventurer in every sense of the word.  He’s sailed around the world on solar power, and attempted to paddle his way across the Northwest Passage in a solar-powered kayak. And now, he’s revealed an airplane that could carry him to the stratosphere on solar power. SolarStratos is a 24.9-meter (81.7 feet) span motorglider shown to the public for the first time yesterday in Payerne, Switzerland.  With stage smoke and rock-concert lighting glittering from the solar cells on its wings and tail, the Calin Gologan-designed craft materialized before the crowd of 400 (according to Calin) gathered in the specially-built hangar. At a loaded weight of only 450 kilograms (990 pounds), SolarStratos should climb well on its dual motor, a mere 19 pounds itself.  A planned flight time of approximately five hours to take pilot and passenger to the planned 75,000 foot, near-space experience.  On only 42.8 horsepower swinging a 2.2-meter (7.2-feet), four-bladed propeller, this is, outside of the …

A New Twist on Retractable Motors

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GP Sailplanes in Poland recently partnered with MGM Compro of the Czech Republic to add electric power to its line of small, sleek sailplanes.  Concentrating initially on the 13.5 meter racing class (44.29 feet), GP’s craft provide high performance with light weight and compact dimensions. A Long Reach on the Antares Putting a retractable motor and folding propeller into such a tight space required some clever engineering.  Think of the tall mast on the Lange Antares or the Arcus two-seater.  These are large, heavier machines, so the propeller, mast and motor can be accommodated (tightly) in their fuselage.  The video gives a good view of just how close the quarters are on the Antares at about the 3:14 mark.  With a 118-square-foot wing area and 59-foot wing span (the 18T model), the average chord of the Antares is two feet. Tucking the Motor into a Tighter Space GP’s aircraft are much smaller, with narrow chord wings, part of their high …

A First Electric Helicopter with a Humanitarian Mission

Dean Sigler Batteries, Electric Aircraft Components, Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation 2 Comments

Brammo, one of the first American electric motorcycle makers, established itself as an early competitor in racing, and after less than a decade in the new arena, sold the motorcycle racing enterprise to Polaris Industries Inc.  “Following that announcement, Brammo confirms its exclusive agreement to supply its electric powertrains to Polaris for inclusion in motorcycles and other on-road and off-road vehicles.”range of vehicle OEMs.” From Motorcycles to Helicopters Surprisingly, that range of vehicle OEMs includes a successful electric helicopter launch. According to the Portland Business Journal, “Brammo lent its expertise to a Tier 1 Engineering launch of a battery-powered manned helicopter last month. The launch included the first hover taxi and a record five-minute cruise flight to 400 feet altitude.” Tier 1 describes itself as “A provider of engineering services, specializing in lightweight composite structures. We offer engineering design and build services to the Aerospace, Energy, Marine, Medical, and Consumer Product sectors. We handle all projects in a secure environment …