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  1. R

    Amazingly ! the website ultralightnews.com is still up.

    Beat me to it @P-Chapman https://whois.whoisxmlapi.com/lookup-report/Jl2Vqxp8R8
  2. R

    Why is GA continuing its demise?

    A lot of the missing pilots and their machines didn't go away from GA, they're on a parawing powered or otherwise and hence off the conventional GA map. Parawings have been ascendant for well over past decade and nobody seems to notice.
  3. R

    Crossing the Atlantic Ocean with a homebuilt jet or an electric aeroplane.

    In current state-of-the-art, fuel-cells (not batteries) are the most performant energy sources for electric airplanes by far. Given the spec (electric, crossing Atlantic, MTOW under 3000kg), fuel-cells would get first look (not the afterthought) if I was scheming such an aircraft.
  4. R

    Crossing the Atlantic Ocean with a homebuilt jet or an electric aeroplane.

    It is possible to have a long-range electric aircraft using fuel-cells; there is a stock electric Antares glider modified for fuel cells instead of batteries in Europe somewhere. It has fixed tanks on the wings to hold the hydrogen in (I believe) hp gaseous form. Range something like 3,000 km. I...
  5. R

    Why is it so hard to be profitable in aviation?

    if you can articulate a genuine claim, get a provisional patent for a few hundred bucks and say the new gizmo is "patent pending" from day 1; if things going your way a year later (and nobody has come out of woodwork with claims), declare the patent application is in continuation (and I'd...
  6. R

    Why is it so hard to be profitable in aviation?

    If you had something genuinely unique, and it was a hit, IP would be your only 'moat' against a bigger fish. Especially in 103 category where stuff can get cheap startup-capital wise. If anything, it'd help make it seem simpler for the bigger fish to try buying you instead of crushing you.
  7. R

    Why is it so hard to be profitable in aviation?

    For all the alleged decline in the industry past couple decades, parawings have happened. They completely dominate foot-launched flight compared to Rogallo hanggliders anymore and paramotors have also exploded in popularity. The industry seems healthy with hundreds of entries in paraglider...
  8. R

    Dreaming Up the Ultimate Light Fighter Inline

    I4 and I6...what about five-cylinder auto-conversions? Audi RS3 inline-5's make about 400hp and weigh about 400lbs. Remove the turbocharger bits and it would get close to 250lbs/200hp on paper. No idea how it'd sound.
  9. R

    TurbAero Small Turbine

    Tiny engines suffer from unavoidable scaling loss ratios. Take a one meter ID compressor case. 1mm clearance to blades. Less than half of one percent of the compressor area is a gap around the compressor. Make a six centimeter compressor face with same 1mm clearance, almost 7% of the area is gap...
  10. R

    What do you think about "e-soaring"?

    You can find Helix folders included in Geiger's parts list for their electric kits: https://www.geigerengineering.de/en/avionics/products 1.3m close to what you're looking for.
  11. R

    Opinions regarding Flying an Unregistered Aircraft

    Cited precedence can be useful evaluating hypothetical situations. https://cite.case.law/citations/?q=49%20U.S.C.%20%C2%A7%2046306 Something in there could apply to here maybe. Looks like fun reading. Unfortunately, many of the ambiguities in code not yet clarified in case precedence represent...
  12. R

    Mass Production of The Cheapest Airplane Ever

    Schematically, if the wing was a constant profile, one could "mass produce" an endless stream of the wing, getting essentially chopped at roll-off end in various sections for various "wingspans." A couple chosen People's Airfoils chopped in various spans would have, by consequence, different...
  13. R

    Don't Do This At Home...Wild Ride In A Hang Glider

    Yeah I was thinking about heat-engine folder-props at work and there's another Schempp-Hirth-something self launcher out there with a weird horizontal-folding 5-blader I've seen somewhere. Whats prop you're putting on your VRX? Tails on most (definitely not all) Atos gliders adjust with flap...
  14. R

    Don't Do This At Home...Wild Ride In A Hang Glider

    Electric motors (and turbines) are a continuous torque turning a prop, piston engines on the prop are equivalent of hammer-brake-hammer-brake averaged out. Only folding prop I can think of on a reciprocator is on Stemme motorgliders - and their proprietary prop is their whole differentiating...
  15. R

    Don't Do This At Home...Wild Ride In A Hang Glider

    I've only got a couple sled-rides hang gliding, but probably couple dozen hours added up altogether over the years flying trikes. What I want, and am trying to cobble together, is a very light super-aero'd trike to plug into that VR190 (think even tinier Ego trike with retracting back gears). If...
  16. R

    Don't Do This At Home...Wild Ride In A Hang Glider

    This is interesting; I inquired about a VRX a guy out of Wallaby Ranch was selling last summer while poking around the intertubes for any used VR190's. I knew that was not the glider for a guy buying his first rigid-wing (i.e. me), and I wanted to put a new complete laminate sail on whatever I...
  17. R

    Squaring the circle

    What I'm thinking of essentially emulates what a speedwing paragliding skier does going down a mountain, but instead of skis going down a mountain uses a powered wheel to do same thing going across level ground (or even going up with enough power in the wheel). The e-uniwheels I linked to are...
  18. R

    Squaring the circle

    I've had thoughts of a vaguely similar gadget to this concept, but it would be a powered one-wheel 'uniglider.' Rough daydream concept is take a lightened-up version of something like this -> King Song S18, 903Wh Battery/2200W Motor, Suspension - ewheels.com, integrated into a vaguely...
  19. R

    New member, planning for a manned missle, for emergency escape

    Inner Wile E. Coyote thinks of a pint-sized version of this: https://www.manmade-ufos.com/rotary-rocket A defunct SSTO concept that used extendable rotors for a windmilling re-entry. A couple cubic meter sized rotary-sprouting return can on a same-scale tight-cross cut grain separable solid...
  20. R

    Wind turbines falling

    I've thought off and on a neat gadget would be a Stirling generator - but mounted in a parabolic solar insolation dish. When sun is shining, get power, when sun isn't shining, some kind of light-carbon burner (no deposits) heats the Stirling engine instead. Could plug it into natgas utility line...
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