Sitting next to your editor for the first day of CAFE’s ninth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium, Paul Bertorelli from AVweb, took copious notes, made sound recordings, and during coffee and lunch breaks and in after-hours sessions, interviewed the accomplished faculty at the Symposium. His thorough and far-reaching reports appear in his last several days’ postings to AVweb. Having stressed mightily while attempting to take understandable notes from each speaker’s talk, your editor can only be impressed by Paul’s super reportorial abilities, and his communicating the scope and importance of what took place at EAS IX. From your editor’s perspective, several significant things took place this year. Senior leadership from Airbus and Siemens presented talks affirming their companies’ commitment to making progress in electric aviation, with future plans to develop two and four-seat aircraft for European and American markets from Airbus, and to produce a range of light-weight, commercially-available motors from Siemens. Siemens has 343,000 employees worldwide and revenues of 101.2 …
CAFE News: Become a Part of Aviation History – Help Fund the Green Flight Challenge
The CAFE Foundation is a small, all volunteer, and remarkably effective group based at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, California. Consider that the Foundation Board members, eight strong, planned and executed all aspects of the fourth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium. This world-class gathering was the product of tight organization, shared goals, and truly remarkable, dedicated people. CAFE Foundation has also documented the performance and flying characteristics of over 25 popular light aircraft, providing scientifically accurate verification or rejection of the sometimes extravagant claims of builders and manufacturers. They have created scientific instruments and techniques that have enhanced the collection of accurate data. Hard work and honesty has provided a touchstone for the evaluation of modern light aircraft and earned the Foundation a reputation for reliability and credibility. CAFE’s reputation has led to its being chosen to be an Allied Organization with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to manage the Green Flight Challenge. The …