Joby and Uber Elevate Form Partnership

Dean Sigler Announcements, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

In a new partnership agreement, Uber Elevate recently added Joby Aviation to its stable of aircraft companies which are to supply craft for its Urban Air Mobility program.  Joby builds electric motors, 12 of which line the wing of NASA’s X-57 Maxwell, with two larger motors for forward thrust when the small units are shut down. This inventory of electric motors on the NASA project gives Joby a certain entrée to interest from the Urban Air Mobility movement, and it’s received that interest from Uber.  Well financed in its own right, Joby has committed to meeting Uber’s desire to have operating sky taxis in the air by 2023, as reported by Andrew J. Hawkins in The Verge. We have written about Joby several times in the past, including this 2014 report that includes an early rendition of the Maxwell project. Much has happened for Joby since then.  Hawkins picked up the story in 2018. “Joby is the brainchild of inventor …

Hybrid Happening Follow-up, Followed by Not-So-Wild Speculation

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

Richard Glassock, the blog’s unofficial hybrid power reporter, sent the link to this video about the NASA GL-10 Greased Lightning test vehicle – which combines hybrid power with vertical take-off and landing abilities.  It’s a more detailed look at the power system and flight characteristics of this aircraft. The Graupner model airplane people obviously know a good thing when they see it, as reported here by the TestFlite gang – a group of enthusiastic model builders and flyers with a try it on and see if it fits attitude.  They excel in action-packed aerial photography that would make Michael Bay jealous.  Their test subject flies like a GL-10 or Joe Ben Bevirt’s S2s, and looks a great deal like an Oliver Garrow design. Graupner’s price seems reasonable for a model craft that emulates what NASA doubtless spent much more on perfecting.  It manages to perform the same kind of VTOL performance with very smooth transitions to forward flight.  The software, …

Electric Lazair Progress

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation 2 Comments

During a visit to the International Vintage Sailplane Meet at Harris Hill, New York, your editor was fortunate to be a guest of Dale and Carmen Kramer, who graciously showed their home, once that of Glenn Curtis, “The Father of Naval Aviation.” Now the Hammondsport cottage (as in Glenn Hammond Curtis), which overlooks the lake where Curtis flew his early amphibians, is home to a high-tech cottage industry, with Dale creating battery monitoring systems, “brain boxes”, and other elements of his electrical power system for ultralight aircraft.  He designs the schematic and printed circuit boards for the system, sends them off to a PCB manufacturer and hand mounts very small components on the finished circuit boards, a process that would normally use expensive “pick and place” machinery and wave soldering.  His low-tech version of wave soldering takes place in a toaster oven. A table on the covered and shaded front porch overlooks the lake and holds stacks of water-jet cut …