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Electric Airplanes Are the Future of Pilot Training
Walk into a flight school today and you’ll probably take your first training flight in an aging airplane that’s noisy, expensive, and burns leaded fuel. But the race is on to change that, with electric trainers that are clean, vibration-free, and cheap to operate. (www.wired.com) More...
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Cool and look forward to it. Just need to sort out electricity generation and partial battery recycling/disposal.
Shouldn't be that different than that of the electric cars....only problem I see is the two hr. life cycle because over time the batteries will deteriorate and discharge faster...Also if these things are to be used for flight training there might be a problem trying to plot out the 150 nm solo cross country that is required to earn your private pilot.
The question I have is this; Once trained on the Electric, how much more training is required to transition to a piston powered and/or a turbine powered plane? How much of a difference is there in weight distribution and flight characteristics between these planes? I'm a big fan of electric powered anything, but the battery life and power cycle is the key. Wouldn't it be nice to have solar cells that could power the load and only need batteries for brief cloud cover. Yes, that would be nirvana. Of course there is the problem of night flights.
Funny you should mention that. This is cool!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA5cPuhEinU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA5cPuhEinU
I'd fly an electric for short hops or just around the pattern for kicks any day.......if there are any boomers left standing by the time these get here it will be the way to go for some cheap flight. The feds need to get off their rears and pass the driver license medical for 3rd class and we can have some fun.
No thanks. I found out recently that DMV passed me for a license with vision that took surgery to correct. We don't need that kind of bureaucracy to allow people wit 2 dimensional thinking into the 3 dimensional world of aviation. Further, I can't imagine some of the people I've driven in an automobile with in the cockpit of an airplane.
Light Sport has had the drivers license medical for the last 12 years. No accidents reported due to medical problems......fully support medical checks for commercial pilots.....but several of them have passed those checks and died shortly after in the cockpit........
I've known pilots and non pilots alike who died of a heart attack, within 12 hours of having their heart checked. I don't abide with the idea that just anyone can or should pilot an aeroplane and a physical seemed to cull out some of the would be incidents if only for interest and the extra steps to get a biannual check up. I have never thought of medics as magicians or sooth sayers and can predict the future. It's more on the idea that, "if you really wanna fly you gotta'...". I've been a professional pilot, i've been a professional driver and I've been a professional Marine Captain. I'vr seen son people who shouldn't have a license to drive a car and I dare say so have you. Those types have to be culled from the practitioners. I made plenty of errors while learning how to fly, but knew I had to correct the errors and keep them out of my flying repertoire. the Physical requirement just adds one more thing to get over and through. A class physical for an ATR never kept them from drinking and flying, but the hoops and hurdles kept some from even trying.
