This isn’t Brian Carpenter’s first time at the small airplane rodeo. He’s built at least a dozen aircraft, designed several from scratch, and even entertained the hosts of TV’s Mythbusters series with a series of rides in his team’s ultralights. His latest creation at Tangent Aircraft is a sleek Part 103 ultralight that seems to break or bend the rules on several fronts, presenting a twin-pivoting-motored, Fowler-flapped, retractable-gear craft that would seem to be too complex to fall into legal 103 status – or even into something the average novice private pilot would be allowed to fly. The 36-foot span and 105-square-foot wing would seem too fast to meet stall limits. Carpenter explained his design philosophy to your editor a few days ago, and he said the greatest challenge of meeting part 103 regulations was attaining the stall speed requirement with the small wing area. Normal, unflapped ultralights need about 140 square feet to meet the 27.6 mph stall speed. …
Chip Yates Becomes World’s Fastest Person in an Electric Airplane
On July 19 at Inyokern Airport in California, Chip Yates and his Long-ESA electric airplane set an unofficial world’s speed record for battery-powered flight, hitting 202.6 mph just before a dead cell in the battery pack forced an emergency landing. It was the airplane’s second test flight. Following a day of taxi tests, Chip, who has been taking flying lessons and recently achieved his Private Pilot’s license, set out to see how fast his 258-horsepower mount could go. He has become the first person to break the 200 mph barrier for electric aircraft in level flight, beating the previous record by Hugues Duval at last year’s Paris Air Show in an Electravia-powered Cri-Cri. Duval managed to hit 175 mph on his run over the main runway at Le Bourget Airport. The same UQM motor in the Rutan-derived airplane powered his road-racing motorcycle last year, enabling him to hit over 200 mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats and to set a …