Just days after flying his electric Lazair for the first time, Dale Kramer attached a float, outriggers, and retractable landing gear to his ultralight craft, took off from the grass field near his home, and flew to a nearby lake to make his first water landings and takeoffs. He even managed to ridge soar the aircraft and stalk floating ducks. Having designed the Lazair 30 years ago, Kramer was heavily involved in the burgeoning ultralight movement, and over 1,200 of the twin-engined craft were built. Today, he’s taking a lead in creating a low-cost ultralight electric flyer, topping the considerable accomplishment with a true world first – a twin-motored ultralight electric amphibian. He uses a pair of Joby JM1 motors, monitored by Eagle Tree instuments mounted to a piece of wood that was part of Kramer’s house in Hammondsport, New York. The house, Kramer found after living there nine years, was once home to Glenn Curtiss, chief rival to the Wright Brothers …
A Useful Spreadsheet and GFC Handicapping Tool
For analyzing the greatest economy from an aircraft’s design, Howard Handelman, a highly-engaged reader of this blog, provides a link to his web site, which includes a downloadable spreadsheet he has devised that will give the inquiring reader hours of enjoyment. Handelman, self-described as, “just a retired IT guy,” with “weak math skills,” but a “compulsively curious” nature, has devised a tool for analyzing any airplane’s performance based on a few known variables, and which he has applied to many of the Green Flight Challenge’s aircraft. The basis for his analyses is his “triangle tool,” a wedge that can be used to help design propellers, “test [the] truth” of claimed aircraft performance, and estimate brake horsepower in real life circumstances (at least within the parameters of the triangle tool). Handelman notes that some aircraft, including those with laminar flow, will “not fit the model very well because they don’t fit the V-squared curve. Synergy won’t look anything like the model.” His findings …
Electric Gull Flies at Arlington
The annual fly in at Arlington, Washington was an electric landing zone for Mark Beierle’s Gull 2000, powered by his own design 20-kilowatt motor. The 36-coil, 42 magnet disk, weighing 16 pounds, is mounted on a truss arrangement behind the airplane’s high wing, and drives a ground-adjustable pusher propeller. Flying five half-hour demonstration flights during the half-week event accounted for almost half the six hours total time on the airplane so far. The airplane has a 74-Volt Rhino Lithium-polymer battery pack made up to 11 packs in a parallel/series arrangement. Beierle says this array, and taking voltage from the ends of each 3.7-Volt series pack, allows balancing of all 210 cells. Power is run through a 500-Amp Kelly controller, which weighs about 12 pounds: Beierle hopes to try a new Kelly unit which will be half that weight and less expensive. Battery protection is provided by circuits in the charger, which will be the same Kelly unit Beierle uses in recharging his …
Serge Pennec, the Gaz’aile, and the 56 Euro Grand Buffet
Americans often speak of the $100 hamburger, the food of choice at some airport café a Cessna hour away from one’s home base. The trip to eat and return often accounts for that sum, with avgas stretching toward $6.00 per gallon. Imagine, then, making a coast-to-coast trip across one’s native land, surveying a dazzling array of scenic delights and partaking of French cuisine along the way – all for not quite that amount. Europe abounds in small, turbocharged Diesel automobiles, sometimes zippy little things that exhibit excellent fuel economy. Many of these cars strive for the “3-liter” designation – the ability to drive 100 kilometers (62 miles) on three liters of fuel (78.4 miles per gallon) and the European Union is pushing toward 95 grams of CO2 emissions per kilometer by 2020. Serge Pennec has built several airplanes using these torquey engines, creating a means of traversing distances cheaply and as greenly as possible. Diesels consume their heavier fuel more frugally than …
Big Frog Diesel Racer – A Different Kind of Green
There are only 10 Nemesis NXT racers in the world, and one happens to be in France, getting tuned up to compete in this year’s Reno Air Races in about 10 weeks. On display last month at the Paris Air Show, the lightweight, carbon-fiber racer lacked the usual Lycoming IO-540 engine, a six-cylinder powerplant that cruises the 1,500 pound two-seater at 325 miles per hour. Aviation International News Online’s Olivia Saucier reported, “The Big Frog racer is getting attention for more than just its tongue-in-cheek patriotic name. The French aircraft is the first carbon-fiber race plane to run on a Diesel engine powered purely by jet-A fuel. And it is turning heads here at the Le Bourget show. “Big Frog is the brainchild of three pilots–Frank Doyen, Mario Soave and Willy Gruhier – who dreamed up the project in 2005. They wanted to prove that a high-performance aircraft with a Diesel engine could win the prestigious Reno National Championship Air …
Paris-Madrid Air Race 1911-2011
100 years ago, the idea of flying an 800-mile cross-country anywhere was a grand and dangerous adventure. With aerodynamics not yet a science and aircraft powered by the self-destructive engines of that day, it took a brave pilot to even make the attempt. The Paris-Madrid race of 1911 was a disaster from the start, and yet one man managed to achieve triumph despite the tragedy. 21 aviators were motivated to sign up in hopes of winning the 200,000 franc prize, but between May 21 and May 26, 1911, only six actually started, and only one flew the entire course. According to Transpress, a New Zealand blog, “After a full year of airshows, advertisers had become bored with seeing flying machines going in circles on a racetrack: they wanted city to city races, as was happening with automobiles. Funded and supported by the newspaper Le Petit Parisien, the international aviation race Paris-Madrid, despite the risks, attracted twenty-one competitors. The announcement of a …
Green Flight Challenge: New Schedule and Rules
CAFE announced June 30 that the CAFE Green Flight Challenge has been officially rescheduled for Sunday, September 25 through Monday October 3, 2011. It will still take place in Santa Rosa, California. A revised prize structure for the event has been approved and is detailed on the organization’s web site. Originally scheduled to run between July 10 and 17, 2011, various factors led to the decision to reschedule. The restructured prize schedule changes the orginal “winner takes all” approach to a distribution of awards, with the winner still taking a substantial $1.3 million. A series of formulas have been added to determine distribution of awards if more than one teams exceeds the 100 miles per hour, 200 passenger miles per gallon criteria. Another formula redistributes the $150,000 prize for best bio-fuel powered craft if no bio-fuel entry achieves the GFC criteria of 80 mph and 160 passenger miles per gallon.
Green Flight Challenge, AirVenture Electric Contest Postponed
Both the CAFE Foundation’s Green Flight Challenge and the Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture Electric Flight Prize are being postponed: CAFE’s for at least a few months and EAA’s until next year’s AirVenture. The CAFE Foundation’s announcement reads simply, “Circumstances have required that the Green Flight Challenge be postponed for at least 2 months. Its new dates will be posted here very soon.” The GFC was to have been held between July 10 and July 17 at Santa Rosa, California’s Charles M. Schulz field. The EAA is holding off because of delays in ensuring that all entrants will be certified and properly registered for the competiton. Their news item reads, in part, “‘As with any new, emerging technology, time is an essential element to ensure advancements are made effectively,’ said Tom Poberezny, EAA and AirVenture chairman. ‘After discussions with the prize candidates, it was evident most would not be able to meet the FAA requirement by AirVenture 2011. Let’s be clear that the era of …
Greenelis GFC Contender Makes Paris Air Show
A trio of plane makers was seen pushing a trailer with an aeronautical looking object into the Paris Air Show last week. It turned out to be the Greenelis PXLD, a Green Flight Challenge flyer, and it looked a great deal like the offspring of the Dieselis and the Gazaille, two French light sport aircraft powered by converted Diesel automobile engines and designed by Paul Lucas. Like its predecessors, it is made of wood and plywood, but in this case has a wing spar built of carbon fiber with “innovative geometry” and a wing covered with plywood. Greenelis’ fuselage has wooden formers and longerons, and like its forbearers, a plywood shell giving its aerodynamic form. The 11 meter (35.2-foot) span, Two-place side by side craft is powered by an 800 cc Mercedes Smartcar turbocharged Diesel engine that produces 30 kilowatts, or 42 horsepower. A single retractable, center-line landing gear (with outriggers) helps give the 275-kilogram (605 pounds) empty-weight airplane a 220 kilometer …
Solar Impulse Shines in a Grand Finale
Nature’s vagaries threatened Solar Impulse’s planned flight all week at the 2011 Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Field, but the clouds parted company, the sun shone brilliantly, and the giant airplane delighted the huge crowd with its extremely slow pass down the main runway. Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, co-founders of the project, had accomplished what they set out to do – make believers in a clean, bright future of emissions-free flight. According to the project’s web site, “Gilles Fournier, President of Le Bourget airshow, declared afterwards: ‘This flight was the highlight of the air show. 30’000 people saw it this morning, and there was a very strong emotion amongst the crowd. This very intense moment reminded me of the prestigious history of Le Bourget air show. Solar Impulse is at the heart of this tradition.’” Almost 350,000 Air Show visitors and 3,000 members of the “international media” had an opportunity to view the 204-foot span machine in its …