Aero-PC and SolarWorld, Ford and SunPower Light Up Transportation

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, GFC, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

With electric aircraft showing the possibilities of a greener future, it’s rewarding to see similar efforts to produce cleaner, off-the-grid ground transportation. Calin Gologan had a gala week at AirVenture, speaking at the Electric Aircraft World Symposium to detail his Elektra One Green Flight Challenge entrant and to introduce his Elektra Two and Four two-seat and four-seat, respectively, electric aircraft.  He was awarded the Lindbergh Electric Aircraft Prize (LEAP) for the quietest electric aircraft by Erik Lindbergh, Charles’ grandson. Saturday, July 30 saw Norbert Lorenzen, test pilot for PC-Aero and owner of a flight school near Landshut, Germany, take Elektra One for a spin around the Oshkosh airspace.  Note Molt Taylor’s Aerocar zipping by between the 15 and 18 second marks on the video. On the ground, the airplane was dollied out for takeoff,“overseen” by the capable Howard Handelman, who also noted something that Gologan had confirmed to Brien Seeley, President of the CAFE Foundation.  The SolarWorld solar cells on …

A Hybrid That Doubles Your Odds

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Of at least making it home at night.  Zero-Grid’s demonstrator looks like an electric green Zap!  Zebra sedan from the outside, but houses a wealth of creative energy, along with interior-filling racks of  batteries and an innovative charging and switching system.  While “range anxiety” is still a concern for buyers of even high-end pure electric cars, this hybrid system promises a final electricity-driven sprint even when the fuel runs out. Using a “Battery Alternating Recharging Process” (BARP), Michael Hargett,the car’s inventor, says Zero-Grid’s Zero Kar™, with two or more individual battery packs and a hybrid generator, can recharge one battery pack while the other runs the car.  By alternating power and charging among multiple battery packs, the car achieves high mileage even for a hybrid, showing over 131 miles per gallon on average, with one run producing over 141 mpg.  It also has reasonable performance, topping 70 miles per hour: the original Zap! Car could only do about 45 mph …

Alternair, X-Caps™ Teaming Up From Sky to Parking Lot

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Stephen Boutenko, founder of Alternair, LLC and Karl Young, founder of Extreme Capacitors have found common cause in analyzing how best to make an electric Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) a possibility.   Alternair’s Amp LSA was featured in a blog entry last year, and Karl Young’s work with ultracapacitors was the subject of his presentation at this year’s Electric Aircraft Symposium. Alternair has recently established a temporary design department in Prescott, Arizona (in association with Embry Riddle Aeronautical University) and is moving his manufacturing facility to Ashland, Oregon, where he hopes to begin production of the highly-sophisticated Amp. Although Amp will be developed around existing lithium-polymer battery technology, Young reports that his creation of high power/high energy ultracapacitors has demonstrated, “Around 0.9 mega Joules (250 Watt-hours per kilogram) in the lab,” with a goal of, “5 mega Joules (1,400 Wh/kg) for sport aviation.”  Funding will spur further progress.  Young explains, “We’ve already found ways to improve our existing design,” and …

A Comparison Too Far

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Feedback, Sustainable Aviation 7 Comments

A recent entry comparing the German Carplane® and Burt Rutan’s BiPod has prompted a response from John Brown, who found the posting of concern for the misapprehensions it might cause in readers. He notes, for instance, “Your current article portrays us as a large Govt. Co. (we got a small subsidy) going up against a ‘charity’ organization (Northrop-Grumman’s subsidiary, Scaled Composites) in whose name the BiPod is registered at the FAA – as a glider; “It compares us to 1930s modular concepts where actually the BiPod’s wings are screw-on/screw-off ‘modular’ and use that older concept; “It attributes a commuter ‘pitch’ to us where, in fact, we’re not aiming for that market at all. [Thanks for your apology. However, the world is still quoting your article.] “It implies we somehow responded to Burt Rutan (we disclosed 2008 – via patent). We’ve displayed at the world’s largest Trade Fair & Europe’s largest GA show – not at a desert strip. We’ve published …

The G4 Gets Off the Grass

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Pipistrel had a good week at Oshkosh.  Shortly after its G4 placed ninth in the Dead Grass Awards, an indication of the number of spectators who tramped around the perimeter of the displayed aircraft,  the company could announce the first test flight of the four-seat electric motorglider. “We are pleased to announce that after long and demanding work nearly of a nearly 30-member team of developers and constructors from Pipistrel’s R & D Institute the first 4-seat electric aircraft in the world took off this morning [August 12, 2011] at 7 AM local time.” Pipistrel overcame several difficulties in achieving this milestone.  Developing the electric power system, the most powerful currently in an aircraft, and importing the 450 pounds of lithium-polymer batteries needed to energize it presented many issues.  Perhaps the utterly new and unique design and the possibility of that many batteries self-igniting caused insurance companies to be more than normally cautious, although one did finally step forward. Because …

David Birkenstock and Ultimate Efficiency

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According to his biography on Airliners.net, “David Birkenstock is a pilot for an east-coast charter and management firm, flying the Turbo Commander 690B and the BeechJet 400A. When he’s not flying, he’s working on modifying a light sport airplane for pressure thrust, hoping to enter it into the NASA Personal Air Vehicle Challenge. He has posted more information about pressure thrust at PressureThrust.com.” Birkenstock’s presentation at the fifth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium in Santa Rosa, California on April 29, 2011 extended his thoughts on pressure thrust, an outgrowth of Fabio Goldschmied’s theories that are well represented in the CAFE Foundation’s library. Most surprising (or maybe not surprising at all) in his talk were comments by major players in the aerospace industry. Around 2000, a senior airflow fellow for a “major airframe manufacturer was quoted as saying, “Our position is that aviation is a mature business and that the discoveries waiting to be identified are probably not worth looking for, much …

A Chance to Unwind

Dean Sigler Sustainable Aviation 4 Comments

Would you believe that there were once at least two rubber-band powered airplanes intended to carry people?  The Rubber Bandit and the RB-1 were attempts at truly flexible flight in the 1980s and ‘90s, and each elicited a brief kerfuffle in the press. Rubber Bandit was a well-designed effort to cruise the length of a runway on the thrust provided by twisted rubber bands.  Its motive power was cranked by a pickup-mounted winch that put hundreds of turns on the model-airplane-like craft’s motive source. Dave Barry was taken by the concept, and interviewed George Heaven, the plane’s designer in an August 3, 1997 column titled, “The Rubber Band Man.”  He talked about Stuff that Guys do, such as dropping bowling balls from airplanes on junked cars.  He explained that Guys, hearing about such things, responded with, “Cool!”  Women tended to say, “Why?”  Barry noted that, “Because guys like to do stuff… this explains both the Space Shuttle and mailbox vandalism.” …

Lighting Up the Electric Firefly

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation 2 Comments

One highly enjoyable aspect of writing this blog is waking up in the morning to emails from France, announcing some exciting developments for those who love small aircraft. Fabrice Tummers from Luxembourg Special Aerotechnics (LSA) and Anne Lavrand from Electravia alerted your editor to a cooperative venture in which they swapped out the original Eck/Geiger motor/controller and Helix propeller combination  (with which the airplane set a class speed record) on LSA’s MC-30e Luciole (Firefly) for an Electravia power package. Since many of the Michel Colomban-designed MC-30s are powered by a Briggs & Stratton V-twin that produces about 26 horsepower, the new electric motor setup provides a great opportunity to compare electric and internal combustion performance. It should be a fair comparison, with the empty weight of the MC-30e with batteries registering a European legal ultralight 113 kilograms (248.6 pounds). The new system includes a 26-horsepower E-Motor GMPE 102 (motor and controller), a two-bladed E-Props wooden propeller, and a Kokam rechargeable …

It’s a Race – It’s an Economy Run

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Stemme, the German manufacturer of a series of highly innovative sailplanes, motorgliders and even unmanned aerial vehicles, has announced the first Green Speed Cup, which will  take place between August 7 and 13, 2011, starting from Stausberg Airfield every day. Combining a race with an economy run, the six-day event will help illuminate the strategies different teams will use to fly “as fast as possible while minimizing the consumption of fossil fuel energy,” according to the GSC’s organizers.  Explaining that the Cup is a “a direct comparison of technologies, machines, materials and the capabilities of the pilots,” taking into account how pilots can exploit thermals and winds, Stemme expects that the competition should “practical solutions for saving energy during powered flight.” If all goes well, “Today’s standards for cruising speed, range and endurance should be reached or exceeded as far as possible.”  The contest will support a cooperative research project between Stemme and the Technical University of Dresden. Seven aircraft, …

If You Can Draw It, We Can Print It – In 3D

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Students and faculty at the University of Southampton on the southern English coast have created an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in just a week, from the initial design to the finished, flying object. “Printed” from nylon on an EOS EOSINT P730 nylon laser sintering machine, the plane emerges from the device in successive layers and comes with hinges already in place, emulating the bearings, crank and headset-in-place bicycle recently produced by EADS (Airbus) using similar technology and materials. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFFFiB_if18 Part of a “ground-breaking” course of study “which enables students to take a Master’s Degree in unmanned autonomous vehicle (UAV) design,” the Southampton University Layer Sintered Aircraft (SULSA) can be snap-fitted together in minutes without tools. SULSA has a 2-meter (6.4 feet) wingspan and an electric motor reputed to be “almost silent” in cruise mode (but not so much in launch mode as the video reveals).  It is steadied by a “miniature autopilot developed by Dr. Matt Bennett, one of the …