Tehachapi Soars with New ideas – Day 2

Dean Sigler Biomimicry, Electric Powerplants, Solar Power, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

The annual Experimental Soaring Association Western Workshop spills over the Labor Day weekend, starting with a welcome barbecue/potluck Friday evening and an official kickoff on Saturday.  Sunday features more technical presentations and this year – an organization business meeting and a closing talk about moon shots. Pelicans, Albatross and Perpetual Flight Phillip Barnes, an accomplished aerodynamicist, photographer and expert on soaring birds, links all his interests and skills in his web site, How Flies the Albatross. This year, he brought his knowledge to bear on a design for a flying machine that would pull energy from the air it flies through to power its electric motors – Coulomb Keeper. He described the design process behind it in a talk titled, “Aircraft Energy Gain from an Atmosphere in Motion.” Keeper is an outgrowth of Phil’s earlier aircraft concept, Faraday.  Both are derived from his desire to fly like the Albatross, which manages to circumnavigate the Antarctic Circle in seemingly perpetual flight.  …

The Man Who Made This Blog Possible

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation 4 Comments

Your editor received this sad announcement yesterday from Andy Kecskes, editor of the Sailplane Builder newsletter, forwarded from Murry Rozansky, President of the Experimental Soaring Association. “Bruce Carmichael passed peacefully with his family by his side on Tues. I am glad that our and the other soaring organizations honored his contributions before this sad event. Bruce was 91+years old, an accomplishment in itself.  There will be a celebration of Bruce’s life on Sat. Aug. 15th at 10:30 am at Palisade’s Methodist Church, 27002 Camino de Estrella, Capistrano Beach, CA.  Reception to follow services.”  Please RSVP to; georgianatives@yahoo.com.” Bruce was a pioneer in low-Reynolds number aerodynamics, and had been influential in the design of many record-breaking and visionary aircraft.  He is listed as part of the team on Solar-Flight’s web page, performed a detailed design analysis and drag breakdown on Mike Arnold’s record-breaking AR-5, and was inspiration for many designers to explore the new realm of microlift, a low-speed, high-lift concept that …

Albatross, Dragonflies, and Hummingbirds

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

Your editor took a trip to Tehachapi, once home of the infamous California Women’s’ Correctional Institution, mentioned in no less than three 1940’s films noirs.  (It’s now a gray-bar hotel for bad boys, not bad girls.)   Lesser offenses were in mind, though, since Labor Day weekend has been the time for 31 meetings of the Experimental Soaring Association’s Western Workshop.  The group, devoted to improving sailplanes and testing the limits of soaring technology, has been in the forefront of many significant developments, and its members include many record holders and aerodynamics experts. This year’s convocation included talks on birds, dragonflies (the Libelle sailplane), and even a demonstration of Aerovironment’s spy hummingbird, a camera-toting drone no larger than a 90-percentile member of the Trochilidae family. Phil Barnes kicked off the Saturday talks, showing his incredible computer simulations of the dynamic soaring flight of the Albatross, which included an impassioned plea to help preserve this magnificent bird.  He noted that “gyres” of plastic slurry distributed …