Elektra One Video and a Correction

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, GFC, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

This morning, your editor entered the press release and a photo of the PC Aero Elektra One in flight, noting that the landing gear was probably retracted to allow the low energy use reported by Calin Gologan, the plane’s designer.  The video and its accompanying text belie that assumption, and promise even better performance when the airplane is reconfigured in the near future.

“Elektra One performed the first flight on 19 Mar. 2011 at the Augsburg Airport in Germany.  Jon Karkow, a well known test pilot and aircraft engineer performed the first flight.  Flight characteristics and engne parameter were tested. The test pilot was very satisfied with the results.  Three flights were performed. The climbing rate was 400 ft/min.  A new 30 min. flight was performed on 23 Mar.  Only about 3kW from the total on board of 6kWh energy was used.  In the next two weeks the new variable pitch propeller and the retractable landing gear will be installed.”
Thanks for the whole team who contributed to this success !!!

Comments 1

  1. What a delightful end result. Quiet, fast, manouverable, and unimaginably inexpensive to operate (under a cent per kilometre at todays electricity price). Bring on micro airportals. If you were paying several dollars per landing and takeoff it is still far cheaper than road transport, even before toll road fees or congestion fees are taken into account. And a busy air portal would be earning up to half a million dollars a year for a few acres of land.

    This quiet little revolution going on here is going to create quite a storm a little further along once these designs become more advanced and robust, though Elecktra one is looking every bit robust. It is all coming together nicely. Flight instrumentation is progressing well with excellent lower cost solutions appearing regularly, and I am thinking of the just released TL3000 panel for example. It would be interesting to get an update on how far along the NASA pilot interface has come.

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