NASA Rethinks X Planes

Dean Sigler Electric Aircraft Components, Electric Aircraft Materials, Electric Powerplants, Hybrid Aircraft, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

In your editor’s childhood and youth, X Planes were all premised on speed, Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier in 1947 in the Bell X-1 when your editor was five years old (do the math).  Movies that filled screens in those days featured test pilots as steely-jawed, fearless protagonists beating back the awesome forces in the sky.  Frequent news stories and breathlessly narrated newsreels, and later television news captured the imagination with items about going higher, faster, and farther. NASA is bringing back the X-plane, but emphasizing quiet, efficient, clean and practical goals.  NASA’s own description of the programs shows a turn toward green aviation in our future.  “Goals include showcasing how airliners can burn half the fuel and generate 75 percent less pollution during each flight as compared to now, while also being much quieter than today’s jets – perhaps even when flying supersonic.”  We still feel the need for speed, but responsibly. While the X-1 was a product …

Hungary Scores an Electric First

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Thanks to Richard Glassock, we have news of the first electric airplane to fly in Hungary.  The Magnus eFusion made its maiden flight at the Matkópuszta airfield in Kecskemet, Hungary on April 11. A two-seat, side-by-side, low-wing monoplane, eFusion is an all-composite craft with fixed tricycle gear.  Its 410 kilogram empty weight includes batteries and a ballistic recovery system. With a maximum takeoff weight of 600 kilograms, the airplane normally flies with a Rotax 912 or UL Power 260 iSA, both four-cylinder, four-stroke units meant for the Light Sport Aircraft market. A fusion of the Corvus Racer 540, a high performance aerobatic aircraft flown in the Red Bull Air Races and the Corvus Phantom, a Light Sport Aircraft, the Magnus Fusion series of aircraft sport a symmetrical, fully-aerobatic wing (6+/3- G, not the 10G wing of the racer), a titanium firewall, chromoly tube center section (described as an “integrated chrome molybdenum central console”) and ballistic aircraft retrieval parachute.  The airplane …

SULSA Guides the Royal Navy

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We reported on the reputedly first 3D-printed airplane, a laser-sintered plastic craft with a structure we compared to that of the WWII Wellington bomber, almost five years ago.  Since then, the aircraft has been dubbed SULSA (Southampton University Laser Sintered Airplane) and taken its place with the Royal Navy. Jim Scanlan, lead academic on the project and professor of design within engineering and the environment at the University, explains, “Not all of our aircraft are 3D printed and the biggest one is around 60 per cent 3D printed.  At the moment we make this lovely sophisticated lightweight structure and then spend a week making all the wiring and soldering. It’s labor-intensive and error prone. Our vision is that we print all the wiring into the structure at the same time and that will be a huge step forward.” He credits the designer of the Wellington for inspiring the small craft’s internal geodesics.  “Barnes Wallis developed a very efficient geodesic structure …

Quart in a Pint Pot

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

Lilium is still in its incubator stage, but drawing a lot of interest for its radical two-seat, high-speed aerial vehicle. EIT Climate-KIC, one of the funding organizations helping underwrite this startup, includes some startling claims in Lilium’s description. “Lilium is designing the world’s fastest and highest-range electric aircraft that is commercially available. “The two-seated light aircraft consumes half the energy of today’s most efficient electric cars and is so quiet that it can’t be heard flying in 1 km (@3,300 feet) altitude. It is propelled by electric impeller engines and features an extensive safety concept comprising a 3-fold redundant fly-by-wire control system, 12 redundant batteries and engines as well as a parachute rescue system for the whole aircraft.” The ESA Business Incubation Center, another of Lilium’s backers, has more: “Lilium is developing, building, and selling a two-seated electric jet capable of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL). The company was founded in February 2015 by four engineers and Ph.D students from Technische Universität …

It Flies Hands Free!  Could It Be Intel Inside?

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e-volo’s Volocopter VC200 made its first “manned” flight on March 30, 2016, with managing director Alexander Zosel maintaining control for a few minutes, and then letting the 18-rotor vehicle find its own way.  He held both hands out the side door for several seconds to show the Volocopter was flying itself – and quite stably in hover at that.  He repeated the hands-off approach later in the flight. Zosel lightly held the single control stick in the machine, controlling vertical motion through thumb movement on the video-game-type controller, lateral motion by twisting the control stick, and banking by tilting the control stick.  It all seems intuitive and well harmonized.  The videos show the flight and its happy aftermath. Unlike conventional helicopters that require both hands and both feet on the controls, usually in subtle motions that resemble Ringo Starr or Buddy Rich at their best, the single control stick in the VC200 is, according to all concerned, pretty intuitive. How long …

Yi Cui and team Devise a 10X Anode

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Batteries are complex things to design and make, with materials scientists and chemists facing unlimited numbers of options for materials choices, formulations and proportions, and manufacturing techniques that will make hoped-for performance attainable on a commercial level. Yi Cui and a distinguished array of undergraduate and graduate students at Stanford University have written 320 academic research papers since 2000, with the rate of publication seeming to increase every year. To put icing on that multi-layered cake, Dr. Cui has helped found his own battery company, Amprius, using his depth of knowledge to take batteries in directions interesting enough to draw the attention of well-known investors – including Stanford.  The only recent information on the web site today shows the firm is looking for a battery scientist and a battery engineer. His academic and research work continue, though, with his latest efforts producing a turn away from his work with silicon – ,making a novel lithium/carbon electrode with extremely high volumetric …

Making Like a Canary in the Canaries

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Thomas Senkel has gained fame for flying an unlikely-looking multiple rotor helicopter with a Pilates exercise ball landing gear and helping drive through that design to a far more refined Volocopter VC200, which we reported has just become the first certified electric helicopter in Germany Knowing how to get the most out of very little, Senkel skipped the usual “crow-hops” performed by experimental test pilots and instead took a 46-minute ride over La Palma in the Canary Islands with his electric scooter/paraglider combination.  The six kilowatt (eight horsepower) hub motor took him up a long hill to the high launch point and the 13.5 kW (18 hp) FlyTech motor launched him into the air for a long flight to the beach below.  In either mode, the vehicles uses little energy, doesn’t pollute, and is quiet enough to be allowed in areas where noisy engines would not be permitted. The first prototype of a flyable electric scooter, Skyrider One is a …

Volocopter VC200 Certified in Germany

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With China certifying its RX1E two-seat electric trainer recently, Germany beats the rest of the world to electric rotary-wing certification with its provisional certificate for the VC200 Volocopter as an ultralight aircraft – certificate number VVZ, registration D-MYVC.  This will allow the German Ultralight Flight Association (DULV) to continue testing the vehicle, a program in place since 2013.  Testing has been done on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure – a telling name for the organization since the German government feels a strong digital infrastructure is necessary to efficient operation of all transportation. Further testing will lead to certification of the VC200 as an ultralight prototype and, following successful completion of testing, to series production. Volocopter’s 18 lifting rotors, each powered by a small outrunner motor, require 45 kilowatts to hover, “depending on the air pressure / temperature,” according to e-Volo GmbH.  Multiply redundant systems ensure stability, “even if parts of the system were to fail,” …

A Large Quadplane Version of the Pilatus Porter

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

Richard Glassock, a long-time contributor to the blog, is from Australia, and has lived and worked in Hungary for the last few years.  He’s known to blog readers for his work in autonomous aircraft, very large sailplanes, and hybrid propulsion design. He shares news this week about “some excellent work by an Australian researcher I have known for a while. In one way or another, he is actualizing many of the ideas/dreams I had 20 years ago.”  The craft isVTOL (vertical takeoff and landing), fixed wing, capable of automated flight, and is almost a hybrid (depending on definition). It was developed for the Outback Challenge, originally a chance for aircraft designers to show how their craft could autonomously search for and find Outback Joe, a mannequin layabout who would otherwise become dingo bait.   The 2014 event “was themed around an outback rescue mission.”  2016 sees Joe “stuck in a clearing in the Australian Outback, surrounded by floodwaters, but needs to …

Tomas Brødreskift to Appear at SA Symposium

Dean Sigler Announcements, Biofuels, Diesel Powerplants, Electric Aircraft Components, Electric Powerplants, Hybrid Aircraft, Sustainable Aviation 2 Comments

With the upcoming Sustainable Aviation Symposium (May 6-7, 2016) already packed with stellar presenters, we are excited to have Tomas Brødreskift join the faculty.  An industrial designer whose skills in product and process design, project management, ergonomics, and visual and CAD design have led and enabled him to bring his amphibious Equator P2 Xcursion to life will share his expertise and experiences with attendees at the Sofitel San Francisco Bay. Tomas’ demonstrated skills in designing everything from Hardrocx mountain bikes to an array of consumer goods have helped prepare him to guide the Xcursion from concept to final product.  Since he has overseen every step of the design/build process, the airplane is a reflection of its unique specification and its designer’s attention to detail. The Equator web site explains, “The P2 was designed from the ground up to be a highly practical aircraft. It is made for 2 people initially (with a future option for 4 seats) with focus on …