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 …
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 …