Sustainability at AeroExpo2025: Klaus Ohlmann’s Stemme Hybrid

Dean Sigler Announcements, Hybrid Aircraft, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Klaus Ohlmann is legendary in his accomplishments.  Having surmounted Mount Everest in a sailplane, traversed the Alps and the Andes in sailplanes and battery- and solar-powered craft, and contributed to wave soaring studies, he is ready to set a new type of record – one with a Stemme hybrid power system. In its sadly last post, https://www.electric-flight.eu/ left us with this news.  “With a modified Stemme hybrid S10, Klaus Ohlmann wants to fly 2000 kilometers (1,243 miles).”  The publication missed its headline by 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), which would make Ohlmann’s goal 1,864 miles, requiring up to 20 hours of leisurely travel.   Stemme has long relied on a unique distribution of power components, with a fossil-fuel-powered engine behind the pilots, a shaft passing from its power takeoff between the two occupants to a forward-mounted, cleverly-concealed propreller tucked into a sliding nose cose.  The layout is similar to that of the P-39, and later P-63 Bell Airacobras of WWII.  Despite the …

Derek Piggott MBE: 1922 – 2019

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Fred To, who crafted the first solar-powered aircraft to carry a pilot, alerted your editor to the passing of Derek Piggott MBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire).  Derek was a master sailplane flight instructor, movie stunt pilot, the first human to successfully take off and fly an aircraft on muscle power alone, and a pioneer in electric aviation. Your editor met Derek at a Soaring Society of America convention in Seattle, Washington in 1980, and has an autographed copy of his autobiography, Delta Papa: A Life of Flying, as a cherished memento of that event.  It covers his years in the Royal Air Force starting as a cadet, rising to pilot officer, and flying in Canada and India in a variety of gliders and powered aircraft. An Engine and Pilot Following his wartime experiences and discharge from the RAF, Derek taught flying in powered craft and gliders.  His experience in what finally amounted to over 300 types of …

Feathers in Flight Inspire Anti-Turbulence Technology

Dean Sigler Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

“Inspired by nature’s own anti-turbulence devices – feathers,” researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a system that emulates the movements of feathers with which birds control their flight path in the most turbulent conditions. Dr. Case van Dam gave a talk at the 2014 Electric Aircraft Symposium on controlling aircraft in turbulence and providing smoother rides with Gurney flaps, jet flaps and micro tabs.  The RMIT team chose to mimic the motions of feathers on a bird’s wing to gain many of the same advantages.  The Unmanned Systems Research Team learned enough to file a provisional patent on the system, detecting disturbances in the air ahead of the airplane.  Both approaches might help the electric commuter aircraft proposed by Dr. Brien Seeley and Dr. Mark Moore as part of the hoped-for “pocket airpark” system. Research supervisor Professor Simon Watkins explained the benefits of the University’s wind tunnel testing on a model of a small aircraft.   “By sensing …

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 …