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Big Buzz For $60,000 Electric Flight Prize
gilgsn writes "Electric Light Sport Aircraft are sprouting up all over. Now that the Experimental Aircraft Association is offering a 60,000 prize for the best ones, manufacturers are gearing up for the competition to be held the last week in July, at AirVenture 2011 in Oshkosh, 'The World's Greatest Aviation Celebration.' Airplanes will be tested for endurance, speed and time-to-climb. Pilots, charge up your batteries.."
Fo sho?
Or perhaps the editor meant "for".
I didn't realize Slashdot is now offered in Ebonics.
Switched reluctance motors and Toshiba SCiB batteries.
As of today, there is no way to do it better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_reluctance_motor
http://www.toshiba.com/ind/product_display.jsp?id1=821
Just sayin'
* Carthago Delenda Est *
"Now that the Experimental Aircraft Association is offering a 60,000 prize for the best ones"
The prize is 60,000? Really? That's not hard, here's a 60,000 just for asking, and i can offer a lot more than that. How about 600,000? Or 6,000,000? Really i can sit here and hold the "0" key down all day, so you can have as big of an integer as you want. (Though at a certain point i might have to switch to scientific notation.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I'm more concerned about what your Light Sport Aircraft at 30,000 feet, you'll find the fueling station infrastructure at lower altitudes is quite fine.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
It comes down to efficiency, and energy management.
The limit in the energy capacity for current battery technology (vs weight) simply means we need to push for far more efficient airframes.
Nobody is suggesting smacking an electric engine on the front of a Cessna 150 is going to work well, because the energy to push a brick through the air is just to much.
Composite materials, highly streamlined, slippery as hell, fancy stuff like reflex flaps, long thin glider inspired wings... an extremely efficient aircraft with an electric motor could be a pretty nice recreational machine.
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Ignoring the snarkiness of the comment, there's actually a large runaway fusion reaction going on relatively near our planet, which solar powered electric planes can use to extend their range...
http://www.yuneec.com/index.html
http://www.electraflyer.com/
http://www.sonexaircraft.com/research/e-flight.html
None of these have the same glide ratio as a motor glider, and are the beginnings of an emerging electric light sport aircraft industry. A long way to go, but with the rising prices and limited availability of Avgas in many regions of the world, many changes are needed within the General Aviation community to ensure a sustainable future.
Is electric flight the way forward? Maybe, maybe not in the short term. With options like Rotax engines already commonly available for many types and "diesel" (JetA1) engine options also growing for many legacy airframes, as well as new models, there is hope and a number of different routes GA could end up going down.
Brought to you by the author of such childrens' classics as "Some Kittens can Fly!" and "All Dogs go to Hell."
There are aircraft supplemental oxygen systems - either cannulas or masks, so breathing at altitude isn't an issue.
No, the big issue is that LSA aircraft is they're not IFR equipped, and above FL180, it's IFR-only.
Besides this EAA Electric Airplane prize, there's 3 more that I know of:
- The biggest purse is the CAFE foundation Green Flight Challenge $1.6M Presented at Airventure in Oshkosh this July
- The Lindberg Electric Aircraft prize is an annual prize that started last year at Oshkosh
- The Berblinger prize 3 weeks from now in Germany
Not just for cool RC model airplanes any more. E-flight is on the rise - the first killer app will be UAV's and motorgliders.
Burt Rutan has this if he wants it.
There's not much time until the competition so something new is out of the question, but I think there a suitable starting point for several of the records in the Model 76 Voyager. It could carry 3 tons of batteries and needs about 100 hp. How long would 6,000 lb of lithium batteries last running a 100 hp motor?
Another choice would be the GlobalFlyer.
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