Dr. Brien Seeley, President of the CAFE Foundation, has made the following announcement: “The Chief designer of the F-22 Raptor has prepared another spectacular design: The World’s Fastest Electric Vehicle. This new aircraft design will be presented along with the other outstanding talks at next week’s CAFE Electric Aircraft Symposium, April 27, 28 in Santa Rosa, California (Sonoma Wine Country). This symposium, dedicated to the burgeoning new domain of emission-free flight, now has representatives from Boeing, Bosch, IBM, Honda, Nortrhop-Grumman, Japan Air Lines, Rolls-Royce, Siemens, Aerovironment, FAA, Cummins, Cessna, Lycoming and many other companies enrolled to participate.” The high-speed electric may be a response to Ivo Boscarol’s pledge to put up $100,000 of his Pipistrel G-4 winnings at last year’s Green Flight Challenge for the first supersonic electric aircraft. Program Details can be found here. There is still time to pre-register online here.
Pantera Rollout at Friedrichshafen
Friedrichshafen is the place to be for new aircraft announcements, with PC-Aero yesterday and Pipistrel today showing off new aircraft. Pipistrel, having won the Green Flight Challenge in September, could not rest on its laurels, today sharing the news that, “The revolutionary 4-seat all composite design, featuring retractable undercarriage, 200 kts cruising speed, 1000 NM range, comfortable cabin and a choice of three powerplants – conventional/hybrid/electric – is presented to the World for the very first time.” Those lucky enough to be at Aero 2012 , hall A5, will doubtless flock to see the Pantera, a graceful design that does 200 knots (230 miles per hour) on its 200-hp, Lycoming IO-390 engine while burning 10 US gallons per hour. This relative fuel economy (a recent Mooney ride saw the airplane consuming 16 gallons per hour at a lower speed) allows Pantera to carry four people 1,000 nautical miles (1,150 statute miles). CEO Ivo Boscarol is obviously proud of his new …
Friedrichshafen Becomes Elektra
Dr. Birgit Weißenbach, who heads up marketing for PC-Aero, the German firm that produces light electric and solar-powered aircraft, sends two pictures from the company’s display at Aero Expo, now taking place in Friedrichshafen, Germany. The display is overflown by a 1/5-scale model of Elektra Two, their anticipated two-seat electric airplane with solar cells, a design intended for travel, training and flying clubs. Another model, the Elektra Observer LT, represents their unmanned “Very Light Electric Aircraft” with solar cells to allow long-duration civil surveillance. On the floor, Elektra One has its full complement of Solar World solar cells, which supplement its battery power. Elektra One Solar has longer wings and a larger solar cell area, both extending its range. Both use the Flytec HP-13.5 motor and controller, associated battery pack, and claim up to three hours endurance and 400 kilometers (250 miles) range. Dipl. Ing. Calin Gologan, founder and President of PC-Aero, will hold a press conference April 18 and …
A Shot of Lithium with a Water Chaser, Please
Lithium, a highly reactive metal, will fire off its electrons in a fizzy display if placed in water. As one source explains, “The lithium-water reaction at normal temperatures is brisk but not violent.” It comes as a surprise then that one lithium battery manufacturer, PolyPlus Battery Company, insists on putting its lithium battery electrodes in H2O. The firm makes both lithium/air and lithium/water batteries, holds over 72 patents on its intellectual property and has recently earned, along with its partner Corning, an ARPA-E (Advanced Research Project Agency – ENERGY) grant of nearly $5 million. It also made Time magazine’s list of the “50 Best Inventions of 2011.” It will be presented as a finalist in the Edison Awards dinner in New York City on April 26 for the Best New Product prize. Even more surprising are their performance claims, which Bruce Katz, Manager of Intellectual Property for the company, made at last April’s Electric Aircraft Symposium in Santa Rosa, California. …
Deturbulating a Record Flight
Sumon K. Sinha, Ph.D., P.E., and head of Sinhatech, had a part in the recent Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI) record by Mr. Jean-Luc Soullier and recorded in a blog entry on March 10. Dr. Sinha wrote that, “CAFE Foundation’s Blog on March 10th, 2012 did not mention that the Colomban MC-30 aircraft had Sinhatech’s Deturbulator tape treatment on the wing upper surface as shown in the attached photograph. I would like to have this added to complete the description of the aircraft.” Sinhatech Deturbulator tape is an innocuous-looking strip applied along the span of a wing at a point which will trigger a response from the tape, which oscillates in the airflow, increasing lift and mitigating skin friction, according to company white papers. Dr. Sinha points out that, “This is the first independently recorded flight with wing Deturbulator treatment by FAI. It is also the first independently recorded flight with full-span Deturbulators on a powered aircraft.” The Sinhatech web site …
Another Plastics Recycler Turning Waste to Energy
A recent news item on National Public Radio caught this blogger’s ear, and showed the increasing number of companies attempting to control an otherwise uncontrollable growth of plastic waste. JBI, Inc., a startup company says, in promoting its new process, “Our patent pending Plastic2Oil® (P2O®) process is a commercially viable, proprietary process designed to provide immediate economic benefit for industry, communities and government organizations with waste plastic recycling challenges.” JBI’s process uses consumer waste plastic bags (the so-called “T-shirt” bags in which shoppers carry groceries to their cars, Number 5 automotive plastic, food containers and even plastic gas tanks and wine bags. These are fed onto a conveyer system in JBI’s Niagara Falls, New York plant, where they are loaded into a hopper that can accommodate 4,000 pounds per hour of waste plastic. The material flows through an apparatus, 120 feet long, 10 feet wide and 20 feet high, which first preheats and liquefies it. Semisolid materials are separated, and the …
Stemme Motorglider Makes Automated Landing
Stemme AG, manufacturer of highly sophisticated motorgliders, has made their aerial platforms mounts for a huge array of surveillance and sensor systems. Their latest announcement, though, shows the company is thinking next generation thoughts about flying in automated skies. According to the Technical University of Berlin, a co-partner with the University of Stuttgart on the project, “the STEMME s15 landed precisely and safely at 5: 44 P.m. local time.” The flight took place March 22, 2012. Using a flight controller and laser altimeter, the system allows “optional piloting” in its operation. It also provides a high degree of flexibility, letting the airplane land at any airport, even those without instrument landing systems. LAPAZ, their automated flight control system, uses electric actuators and on-board computers to make automated flight a reality. It even opens up a new category of aircraft, the Optional Piloted Vehicle, for missions into hostile environments or situations. The team’s announcement gave some details of the project. “At …
Michelin Promotes Green Driving
Michelin, the French tire people, have made available an informative series of booklets involving green transportation. Let’s drive electric! Electric and Hybrid Vehicles Let’s drive bio! What biofuels for what uses tomorrow? More air! Reduce CO2 emissions in road transport Let’s drive smartly! Connected vehicles and Intelligent transport systems Let’s drive safely! The new stakes for road safety Despite the exclamation point-laden titles and a general predilection toward electric or biofuel technology, the books tend to be even-handed examinations of real world costs and limitations of all types of “green” vehicles. This editor recommends them for at least confronting issues that will be a continuing source of interest and concern for all of us.
Ken Goodrich, Stacking the Flight Deck for Safety
As we head toward this year’s Electric Aircraft Symposium, we look back again at last year’s outstanding array of speakers and presentations. Ken Goodrich, a senior research engineer for the Dynamic Systems and Controls Branch at NASA Langley Research Center, for the last several decades has been intent on creating improved human interfaces for airplane flight decks. His presentation at EAS V last April was based on long-term research (and now available in the CAFE library) and took an approach that challenged the conventional notions of responsibility. What if we were to share responsibility for our safety and that of our passengers with the airplane? What if we were to give over responsibility entirely to the craft itself? How do we interface with our aerial vehicle to ensure our safe passage and that of other aircraft around us? Starting with the training most of us take in learning to fly, we are taught stick and rudder skills, procedures and rules, according …
MIT Solar Findings Mirror Those of 13 Year Old’s Tree Research
A recent report from MIT, replete with computer algorithms and graduate level insights, made your editor dip back into a story about a young naturalist who saw a model in nature that could lead to more efficient solar arrays. Both produced works of genius and give us hope for some real breakthroughs in solar power deployment. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that, “Innovative 3-D designs from an MIT team can more than double the solar power generated from a given area,” and suggested that models of their new approach, “show power output ranging from double to more than 20 times that of fixed flat panels with the same base area.” Jeffrey Grossman, the Carl Richard Soderberg Career Development Associate Professor of Power Engineering at MIT and leader of the research team, reports in a paper published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science that the greatest improvements came in “locations far from the equator, in winter months and on cloudier …