Search results

I totally agree with this and what I can say is that although every component is important, the most important factor designing an aircraft - and especially one with electric propulsion that has, lets say - specific energy challenges, the most important factor is the aerodynamic performance...

Really skewed report. The author is clearly biased towards the hydrogen economy (since he is "President of H2Gen Innovations"). The report is from 2009, since then Tesla demonstrated plenty the viability of pure electric vehicles. Anyway, the report compares only the battery specific energy vs...

There is a range of RPM electric motors can deliver constant power, good motor designs can get close to max power. By using different controls algorithm you get 'field weakening' enabling the electric motor to increase speed by reducing torque. The motor can be designed for low RPM, close to max...

This is electric motor field weakening through mechanical means, almost as old as development of the electric motor. It enables the motor to speed up without increasing power, but reducing torque. It enables the motor to behave as having a continuous gearbox attached, able to configure from for...

Hybrid electric does not make sense for current, existing aircraft. The turbofans are capable of getting up to 60% thermodynamic efficiency while flying at -50 C, 30,000 ft. A hybrid electric cannot even match that, fuel cells systems can do only marginally better, but at the expense of much...

xrotor by Mark Drela: http://web.mit.edu/drela/Public/web/xrotor/

I discovered this video on you-tube today, it demonstrates that electric helicopters are definitely better performers, the builder claims "21kW in the hover, 17 above ETL" Compare that to Ehang 184 multi-copter: "Power required to hover 47 kW", from https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/6/3/26/pdf

Several props have an aerodynamic penalty in reduced Reynolds number compared to a single larger rotor/prop. Some are arguing that the benefit of multi-rotors is reduced mechanical complexity, redundancy, etc, so it's a good solution. I'm inclined to differ, since the aerodynamics is the most...

The propeller/wing combination is not really the best. The most efficient flying is exploiting the large L/D of wings. A good airfoil provides L/D of about 100 driving total aircraft L/D of 20 or more. That means for each 20lbs weight you need only 1lbs thrust force to fly straight and level...

The channel wing is not really good for VTOL flight. Custer invented it as he wanted a wing that is not capable of stalling. The NACA's 1953 test (Langley Full-Scale-Tunnel Tests of the Custer Channel Wing Airplane. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1953) shows that about 8% lift is...

Hi Wayne, let her contact me, I'm also doing a lot of work in the VTOL space.

No, and side forces are probably more relevant to a back mounted propeller as it is more distanced from the CG so it has more arm, the moment created is larger.

Most planes are designed with oversize empennage to cope with propeller de-stabilizing effects, rotating stream flow-fuselage interactions, and so on. If the prop is mounted behind the fuse, the effects are much smaller, the empennage can be sized similarly to what is customary for gliders. The...

The pusher prop theoretically ingest and re-energize the boundary layer so overall the plane should be more efficient, but at the same time the prop needs to cope with dirty air coming in, so the prop efficiency and noise suffers. Eventually the design - as all engineering is a compromise. Not...

Sorry for the glider pilot, we cannot do anything but to learn from such tragic events. It seems that electric aircraft needs to develop means for venting the battery fire outside the cockpit, and have enough fireproof protection to enable the aircraft to reach ground landing site safely. Taking...

Hacking together some electronics for receiving ADSB is ok-ish, it could increase safety. Hacking for sending ADSB out is a big NO-NO. There are reasons these things needs to be certified by FAA and FCC so they are sure it's working properly. Are the ADSB and GPS easy to spoof and jam...

You can buy two cf spars, build one wing, test it to failure, and if you're happy with the result, build the second wing exactly the same, and hope the second spar is similar enough to the first one :)

It is recommended for fertilising the antigravimetric field. The yeld of fools believing in this stuff will be higher.

There is also a report stating the number of hour flown has declined, I cannot find it right now, so no hard data, but if it's true, the stats for accidents per flight hour might be constant.

Who needs anti-gravity?:) Gravity is a fictitious phenomenon, fact demonstrated by Einstein, as it's just a space-time curvature effect. Just bend the space and time back to straight using your thoughts and there you go!