Getting personal once more, this entry highlights my adventures at the 2018 Sustainable Aviation Symposium as reported in the first person. The Sustainable Aviation Symposium for 2018 began its Saturday session with J. Philip Barnes, the Senior Technical Fellow at Pelican Aero Group, who expanded an idea he has been developing for several years – that of flying on energy generated and stored by a self-launching sailplane’s motion through the air. With both a single-seat Coulomb Keeper and larger Faraday First model to analyze, Phil turns to seminal works by Glauert and MacCready to create a motor/generator coupled with a propulsion fan that doubles as a propeller and windmill. Clever use of switching in the control circuitry should enable high-efficiency prolonged flight exceeding what would be possible with batteries alone. Phil’s website is well worth checking out, providing historical and engineering insights at every opportunity. Boris Popov, founder of BRS (Ballistic Recovery Systems) has saved 380 lives (and counting) with …
