An engineer retired to southern Illinois farm country, Jerry Booker has designed and built several airplanes, his latest being the Red Tail Hawk, a Part 103-compliant self-launching ultralight sailplane. He has flown 15 times in his new creation, maintaining meticulous notes and downloading data for review by others. His empirical approach to testing the limits of his electric powerplant (a Randall Fisher 18 horsepower brushed motor/controller combination) and airframe represent a thorough and careful examination of a type of airplane that other homebuilders might be able to make with currently available systems. Jerry’s flight reports are dispassionate and carefully logged, following much of the approach and including many of the criteria developed over the years by the CAFE Foundation. He uses an EagleTree flight data recorder that was developed for model aircraft to track the ups, downs and other parameters of his flights. He checks his airspeed against an Etrex GPS. Jerry posts the results of each flight in the …
ENFICA-FC – A Speed Record for Hydrogen
Professor Guilio Romeo of the Politecnico de Torino, Italy is a man of many firsts. Last year, his team fielded Skyspark, a Pioneer 300 powered with an electric motor fed by batteries. This year, in a totally new development, Professor Romeo coordinated the activities leading to a successful hydrogen-powered electric aircraft, and set a world speed record to top off that accomplishment. The Skyleader 150 Zero CO2 light sport aircraft, built by JIHLAVAN airplanes, Ltd. in the Czech Republic, was fitted with Intelligent Energy proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells from the United Kingdom, an inverter and power management system by Italy’s Mavel Elletronica, and a motor at least partially designed by the University of Pisa, Italy. Tanks and a high-pressure fuel delivery system were created by the UK’s Air Products Limited. Labeled ENFICA-FC (Environmentally Friendly Inter City Aircraft Powered by Fuel Cells) the airplane was actually the fourth machine to fly on hydrogen power, the first being a Boeing conversion of a …
Green Flight Challenge: It Might Look Like a Quickie…
But it will be the Feuling Green Flight Challenger, an entirely new iteration of the Quickie “formula” if Gene Sheehan, Vic Turner, Luke Leatherman and Allon McBee have their way. Created in the wake of the Vari-Eze’s and Long-Eze’s of the early 1970’s, the original Quickie was an 18-horsepower Onan industrial engine-powered irreducible flying machine with great speed for its low power and unbelievable fuel economy. The team’s GFC Challenger is electric, and a far cry from its cast iron past – or the iron-horse Harley-Davidson motorcycles that are part of its surroundings. “Feuling” comes from the high-performance motorcycle and automobile developer who started the company bearing his name. Jim Feuling had over 100 patents to his name, worked with the big names in the racing world, and created a 500 mile-per-gallon engine (at 55 miles per hour) for Honda’s streamliner and fielded a record-breaking motorcycle streamliner that clocked 333.847 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats on October 20th, 1999. …
Go Skynch Yourself – And Smile About It
Jack Lambie, an early hang-glider pilot, wrote in a mid-seventies’ Soaring Magazine of a dream cross-country using ultralight sailplanes with self-launching devices that allowed high launches from flat ground when foot launching was not practical. Lambie would be proud of recent developments in Denmark. Three years ago, we first noted the Skynch, a paraglider (potentially hang glider) self-launching device under development. Then it seemed to disappear from view, only to re-emerge as a fully-developed electric winch with a remote for the pilot. The self-controlled nature of the setup allows a pilot to literally pull him or herself into the blue. The video, which the Skynch people do not allow to be embedded here, gives a convincing demonstration of the system’s ease of use and functionality. Admittedly a bit pricey, the basic winch costs 6,700 Euros (about $9,300), and allows tows for 85 kilogram (187 pound) pilots on 1,000 meters (about 3,200 feet) of line. Interestingly, a 100 kg (220 pound) pilot could be launched …
Solar Impulse – Swiss Pride
Andre’ Borschberg, CEO of the Solar Impulse project, has been flying the giant airplane over many scenic and civic sites in Switzerland, crossing from its home field at Payerne to Geneva International Airport on September 21, and then returning the same day to Payerne. The next day, Borschberg cruised to Zurich International Airport and returned to the plane’s home base. As quoted in the project’s press release, Borschberg was happy about the chance to view Switzerland from his rare and lofty perch. “’These flights are just amazing! Thanks to the plane’s low speed, I was able to discover Switzerland from a completely new angle, fully taking in the beauty of our country!’ said André Borschberg, CEO and Co-founder of Solar Impulse, from the cockpit of HB SIA in Zurich. ‘The Swiss solar flights represent a major step forward for our team, taking us away from our customary airspace. We have learned to work together with international airports, merging in with …
Launching on a Leaf Blower and a Hacker
Paul Dewhurst and Dr. Paul Robertson, chronicled in an earlier entry about their simultaneous electric ultralight flights last year, have created another first, a parallel hybrid motorglider launch. The truncated flight of their Alatus took place on September 9, 2010 at Sywell Aerodrome, between Coventry and Cambridge north of London. Dewhurst notes, “Flight was quite short though (around 1.5 minutes) after the controller suffered a bit of tantrum complete with sparks! Rework [is] in process and we hope to have a rather longer flight soon.” Replacing the Lynch unit normally used in the Alatus’s motorized version with an unspecified 76cc, 2.8 kilowatt (3.75 horsepower) internal combustion four-stroke leaf blower unit paralleled with a Hacker A200 12 kilowatt (16 horsepower) large model airplane motor approximates the Lynch motor’s output. Despite that, the airplane seems reluctant to leave the ground in the video. Dewhurst explains, “Ground roll is quite long on the film, not entirely due to low thrust – it was uphill slightly …
Boeing SolarEagle – The Five-Year Flyer
Whether ferreting out insurgents in Afghanistan or monitoring agricultural trends in America, the ability to stay overhead and continue in a mission is of great importance for an aircraft providing aerial intelligence. Our recent stories about 200-foot span, hybrid electric HALE (High Altitude Long Endurance) aircraft being tested at NASA Dryden Test Flight Center at Edwards Air Force Base showed a pair of large aircraft with the ability to stay up for a week, a persistence of overhead vision that is astonishing. Now Boeing has announced a bigger, wildly more persistent vehicle, the SolarEagle, 435 feet in span, capable of floating around at 60,000 feet on solar/electric power for five years. The 6,000 pound airframe can carry a payload of 1,000 pounds, two-and-a-half times that of the Boeing PhantomEye or Aerovironment Global Observer currently being tested. With increasing miniaturization of electronics, such a craft could carry out multiple military and/or civilian missions simultaneously. According to Defense Update, an online resource, …
Richard Van Grunsven’s Antares 20E
In a visit to Richard Van Grunsven’s airport home, just across the Sunset Highway from North Plains, Oregon, this blogger was privileged to get a closeup view of his Antares 20E, an electric self-launching sailplane from Germany’s Lange Aviation. Spanning 20 meters (65.6 feet), the gleaming white ship has fluidity of line and integrity of design one would expect from Gerhard Waibel (the “W” in Alexander Schleicher’s ASW sailplanes). The outstanding feature that sets this particular long-span craft apart is its 42 kilowatt (57 horsepower) motor, snugged neatly into a bay behind the pilot, and raised on a carbon-fiber mast by a smooth electric/hydraulic mechanism. A cylindrical unit, the motor’s outer shell rotates about a stationary hub attached to the mast. Two carbon-fiber propeller blades attach to beautifully machined fittings on the rotating cylinder, and provide enough thrust to give the 460 kilogram (1,014 pound) ship a 4.4 meter per second (866 feet per minute) rate of climb at its …
Smallest Four-Motor Electric Plane Flies
For a company that employs over 119,000 and has annual revenues approaching 43 billion Euros ($55 billion), the Cri-Cri (Cricket) seems a minuscule part of their enterprise, but garners a huge share of publicity. Reporters and photographers flocked to Le Bourget field near Paris on September 2 to record the first flight of the petite creation. The EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company N.V.) press release explains the excitement. The all electric Cri-Cri, jointly developed by EADS Innovation Works, Aero Composites Saintonge and the Green Cri-Cri Association has made its official maiden flight at Le Bourget airport near Paris on Thursday. This Cri-Cri is the first-ever four-engined all-electric aerobatic plane. The event has been supported by the French Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace. The plane became airborne at 11:12 CET. Take-off and climb were smooth, no vibrations could be felt and manoeuvrability was excellent. All systems performed well and the plane returned safely after 7 minutes. “This aircraft …
Green Flight Challenge: Elektra One Progress
Dipl. Ing. Calin Gologan, President of PC-Aero, showed the completed version of Elektra One, a Green Flight Challenge contender, at Friedrichshafen’s Expo for Sustainable Mobility in June. Over the last two years, PC-Aero has designed a series of light, electric-powered aircraft. As Gologan explains, “Using the existent technology it is possible to fly with a one- and a two-seat aircraft without CO2-emission for more than 3 hours, without noise and for lower operation costs in comparison with classic aircrafts. This is the future of leisure aviation as a bridge to the next step: electric transportation.” Just two months after its debut at Aero 2010, Elektra One graced the halls again as part of “The Electric Avenue”. Surrounded by electric vehicles of every description, the single seater showed off its nicely faired landing gear, and hinted at the powerplant under its smooth cowling – an HPD 13.5 kilowatt (18.4 horsepower) motor normally associated with hang gliders and powered parachutes. PC-Aero notes 21 …