Green Speed Cup Day Two – A Clear Winner

Dean Sigler Diesel Powerplants, Electric Powerplants, GFC, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Robert Adam, one of the organizers of the Green Speed Cup in Germany and pilot of the Flight Design CTLS that ended the competition in seventh place, shared some information on the challenges faced by pilots in this year’s event. “We had 12-15 knots crosswind today (only a little less yesterday) and Tim-Peter (-Voss) managed this demanding taildragger (the SPACEK s.r.o. SD-1 microlight) calmly!”  This very light and short-coupled airplane flies with a variety of two- and four-stroke engines, but Voss’ had a Verner JVC-360 four-stroke unit of 38 horsepower.  It averaged a little over four liters per hour fuel consumption per 100 kilometers (59 mpg) over the practice day and two contest days.  In the Green Flight Challenge, it would have been penalized for being a single-seater and thus having a lower passenger-mile-per-gallon figure than the two, and even four-seat entrants. The TDI turbo-diesel DA-40, for instance, would have had a 4X passenger mile per gallon figure if that had …

Green Speed Cup – Year Two Final Results

Dean Sigler Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Stemme’s Green Speed Cup, a speed and economy run that was to have sped over six days, ended on the fifth, with all five Stemmes still competing, but with a big break between the top three and the bottom five. Stemme’s web site explains the deletion of the sixth event.  “The final race of the 2012 GREEN SPEED CUP was a task of 246 km north of Berlin. Although the weather forecasts looked good this morning, the actual weather didn’t match the expectations. Thus the teams compared their powered flight capabilities as the weather didn’t offer too many possibilities for optimization.” Day five was a cat’s cradle of crossing triangles that added up to 248.2 kilometers (153.88 miles) and was won by Markus Scherdel in his S10VT at a speed of 143.2 kilometers per hour (88.78 mph) while burning 4.4 liters per 100 kilometers (53.46 mpg).  This was not a best speed or most economical flight for the event, but …

Green Speed Cup – Year Two, Day Two

Dean Sigler Diesel Powerplants, Electric Powerplants, GFC, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

The Green Speed Cup is a closed circuit race similar to the Green Flight Challenge, but with a more free-style approach to how each team flies the course. As reported yesterday, the first day’s competition was won by Markus Scherdel, test pilot for Solar Impulse. The second day’s competition was a complete turnaround of day one’s results, with Wolfgang Uhlig taking the crown and Markus sliding to fourth place. Most interesting, the Diamond DA40 TDI, a four-seat Diesel-powered aircraft flown by Daniel Hirth, took second place. A longer event than day one, the task required pilots to fly from Strausberg down the longest leg of a scalene triangle to Klix, a village in Saxony. From there, they turned northwest to Finsterw Heinri and then sped north back to Strausberg to complete the 326.4 kilometer (202.4 mile) course. Uhlig’s winning S10VT toured the triangle at 163.4 kilometers per hour (101.3 mph) while consuming a total of 202.8 kilowatt-hours of energy, achieving …