Two Electric Ways to Oshkosh

Dean Sigler Batteries, Electric Powerplants, Hybrid Aircraft, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Two very different electric aircraft found their ways to AirVenture 2022 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin last week. By eGull from West Virginia 72-year-old Jean Preckel of Bruceton Mills, West Virginia flew her home-built Beierle eGull from her home town to the Experimental Aircraft Association gathering accompanied in a chase car driven by Mark Beierle himself. She is a craftswoman of note, having built fine-arts level models of boats from 1983 until she retired a few years ago.  In 2019, she built and launched a lovely row boat, which displayed her great workmanship and rowing ability. The regional TimesLeader online news outlet reported that having, “…biked biked across the country, along the Appalachian Trail, traveled across Europe working odd jobs, [she] was looking for something new. She eventually came across electric planes.”  This led her to Mark Beierle, who fields a unique builder assistance program. Mark probably supplied builder assistance to Jean, and acted as her ground crew on their epic trip …

Flexibly Keeping Batteries from Blowing their Cool

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Meltdown – not a term one wants to hear when confronting an obstinate boss or while levitating in his or her new Tom Swift Electric Octo-copter.  But it is a real specter confronting electric vehicle users, and one amplified to positive levels of terror in flight. Two groups of researchers have come up with novel ways of quelling that terror and getting rid of the normally flammable electrolyte that helps make lithium battery fires truly memorable. If researchers at Chapel Hill and Washington State University are successful in their research, that acid electrolyte can be replaced with something safer and as a bonus in both cases, batteries using these new substances will perform better and longer. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, led by chemist Joseph DeSimone, Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Chemistry in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences and the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at N.C. State University and of …