Experimentals

The takeoff might better have been described as a launch. With the new 150-HP Lycoming engine in my 700-pound RV-3, it was off in no more than half the 650-foot runway length and climbing aggressively at my normal 80-mph climb speed. At an altitude of perhaps 150 feet, the engine quit abruptly (whammy #2). The […]

As soon as the weather window looks favorable, Solar Impulse pilot Andre Borschberg plans to depart from Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, and fly about 100 miles to New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, according to the support team. The flight path will provide several opportunities along the way for New Yorkers to catch a glimpse of […]

The CAFE organization has been through big changes this year, and last week offered a whole new version of their 10-year-old annual Electric Aircraft Symposium, with a new venue and some new ideas about emphasis and priorities. Duration: 5:30 File Size: 6.4 MB download here

Our planet’s transportation systems are on the cusp of a radical change to “on-demand mobility,” according to several of the presenters at last week’s CAFE symposium in California. “The technology push and the market pull are converging,” said Bruce Holmes and Roger Parker, of AirMarkets Corp. “A large and growing market for ODM exists and […]

Regardless of whether your aircraft is metal, composite, or tube and fabric, quite a few homebuilts these days use composite fairings. Nowhere is this more true than the engine cowl—it’s just not an easy shape to fabricate out of other materials. Unfortunately, for tightly-cowled installations, heat from proximity to exhaust pipes (or a turbo) can […]

The Airbus Perlan Mission II team, which aims to fly a pressurized glider to a record of 90,000 feet, is continuing its flight-test program in Minden, Nevada. Airbus CEO Tom Enders visited the site last weekend, and went for a flight in the glider with the project’s chief pilot, Jim Payne. “Experiencing the Perlan 2 […]

Solar Impulse II completed a 56-hour leg from Hawaii to Mountain View, California just before midnight local time on Saturday. The aircraft, which had to undergo a refit in Hawaii after the epic leg from Japan wrecked its batteries, reportedly performed flawlessly on the trip, which ended with a dramatic entrance over the Golden Gate […]

One reason Aero is my favorite aviation show is that it’s more changeable than either Sun ‘n Fun or AirVenture. Those shows tend to put the same vendors in the same place every year, often with the same booth counters and display items. Given the effort and expense of mounting a show, I can’t really […]

A half decade ago when diesel engines gained some traction as aircraft powerplants, the skeptics got quite a little whisper campaign going by noting that diesel engines could swing only wooden props. Their torque pulses and resonances were just too harsh for the fatigue limits of metal props. The naysayers forgot to mention—or perhaps didn’t […]

Alexander Zosel, managing director of e-Volo, took the Volocopter on its first manned, untethered free flight last Wednesday, launching from an open field in Southern Germany, the company announced today. Video shows the aircraft’s stability and maneuverability, as Zosel flies it with a joystick. “The flight was totally awesome,” Zosel said after landing. “The machine […]