Part of the Green Flight Challenge is the provision of adequate human factors design in the cockpit of the projected airplane. One can only design in so much ergonomic and safety-minded concern for the pilot and passengers. The ultimate human factor is indeed human, a topic Dr. Key Dismukes handled quite ably at the fourth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium. As noted in his NASA resume, “Dr. Dismukes is Chief Scientist for Human Factors in the Human Factors Research & Technology Division at NASA Ames Research Center (CV ). His current research addresses cognitive issues involved in the skilled performance of pilots, their ability to manage challenging situations, and their vulnerability to error. Among the topics investigated by his research group are prospective memory (remembering to perform deferred intentions), management of attention in concurrent task performance, and training crews to analyze their own performance.” His book, The Limits of Expertise: Rethinking Pilot Error and the Causes of Airline Accidents (Ashgate Studies …
Kitplanes Covers EAS IV
Kitplanes, and its on-line sister, AVweb, covered the fourth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium and generated a vido of the event, which includes a thoughtful interview with Dr. Brien Seeley, CAFE Foundation president. Expect to see more media coverage of CAFE Events as the Green Flight Challenge becomes a major aviation event in 2011.
Green Flight Challenge Competitors Come Together on Perlan Project
The Cafe Foundation’s Green Flight Challenge, scheduled for 2011, has drawn some impressive competitors with its $1.5 million prize. Two of these, Greg Cole of Windward Performance, who will field a two-seat motorglider, and Einar Enevoldson, leader of the PC-Aero team, which will launch its Elektra One (see “PC-Aero’s Elektra One,” April 11, 2010), are working together quite collegially on a challenge of their own. Before his death in 2007, adventurer Steve Fossett, with co-pilot Enevoldson, had set the sailplane world altitude record in Perlan I, a modified Glaser-Dirks DG-500. In a continuation of that ambitious adventure, Einar, Greg, and Project Manager Morgan Sandercock are creating Perlan II, a pressurized sailplane that will explore the realm of the nacreous, or ‘mother of pearl” cloud (“perlan” is Icelandic for “pearl”), a shimmery mix of water vapor and other exotic chemicals in the polar vortex at 50,000 to 90,000 feet. Their flight will not only set a world’s sailplane altitude record, but …
PC-Aero’s Elektra One
Dipl. Ing. Calin Gologan, an exhibitor and presenter at this year’s E-Flight Expo at Friedrichshafen, will be at the fourth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium, discussing the design and technology he hopes will imbue the winning entry in next year’s Green Flight Challenge. He notes that the GFC, “the world’s largest prize…awarded in general aviation,” was a major incentive in his pressing forward with an environmentally conscientious design. His Elektra One is part his PC-Aero’s ambitious campaign to fly three different electric aircraft in the next few years, the single-seat “One,” two-seat “Two,”, and most ambitiously, a four-seat “Four.” With at least the shell of Elektra One at the Expo, Gologan is making good progress toward completion of his GFC machine, the prototype for the first of a line of production aircraft. Gologan’s goals are enunciated in his PC-Aero web site. “The Elektra One is environmentally friendly, because it flies without CO2 emissions. It is light and has a high end aerodynamics. Integrated are …