As a former hang glider pilot I've enjoyed the purity of un-powered flight. Because of this I have hoped over the years for powered flight from something other than noisy and vibrating internal combustion engines (ICE).

Since flight for me is strictly for enjoyment, speed that requires lots of power isn't necessary. I believe that advances in battery technology, thin film solar efficiency, and composites in airframe design are all coming together to allow solar electric airplanes.

Here are a couple of examples...

http://www.aircraft-certification.de/in ... solar.html

http://www.aeac.aero/

Anyone else thinking along these lines?

A 2 seat trainer that runs $5 per hour vs $75 just might jump start a resurgence in flight schools. Plus like I said, quiet and no vibration is to me very appealing. I don't know how much longer the refineries will still produce 100LL, in Europe it is hard to find and $25 gallon when found.

electric yes, solar no. Thin film PV has a looooooong way to go and will not work for much of the country and then there's the whole efficiency discussion about the panel mounting on the wing or fuselage - will never be optimally pointed toward the sun.

A motorglider, but shows promise in the way of development. Pipistrel Taurus.

http://www.pipistrel.si/plane/taurus-electro/overview

The Song motorglider is being imported without the 8500 rpm 4 stroke Baily engine and being set up with electric propulsion. 2 hours at 40 mph on 6.6 kwhr batteries.

http://www.electraflyer.com/electraflyer-uls.php

Ive made plans for a diesel electric aircraft engine but the mere suggestion of it to australian authorities quickly concluded the attempt to get it approved will be nothing more than pushing sh!t up hill

noodles wrote:A motorglider, but shows promise in the way of development. Pipistrel Taurus.

http://www.pipistrel.si/plane/taurus-electro/overview

Hey that thing uses the same solar charge controllers i use for work!

DrifterDriver wrote:Ive made plans for a diesel electric aircraft engine but the mere suggestion of it to australian authorities quickly concluded the attempt to get it approved will be nothing more than pushing sh!t up hill

That's too bad. I always thought the Benz designed Smart Car diesel would make a good, economical engine for LSA.

http://flyeco.net/

We have several related discussions going on over at homebuiltaircraft.com. Several of us are interested in using the small industrial V-twin engines from Briggs, Honda, Generac, etc. as a platform for airplanes that can operate on one or two gallons an hour. Small, efficient single seat aircraft are flying now with these engines and achieving truly remarkable operating/fuel costs.The Spacek SD-1 and the Colomban MC-30 are proven designs and are achieving this efficiency in growing numbers... there are dozens of them flying already with excellent performance. But NONE of these are back country flying type machines.

(Personally, I have a design on the sketchpad for a STOL runabout sportplane based on the industrial engines. But it can never be a load hauler or "serious" working airplane.)

Relevant to the OP in this thread, there are a couple of two-seat aircraft operating with the larger versions of these industrial engines, notably Sharon Starks' Kolb Mk. 3 powered by the "Big Bad Twin" form Valley Engineering. There are several videos of this aircraft on the Valley Engineering site and youtube. It can clearly be seen that the performance of this two seat aircraft is very reasonable. This aircraft could be used as an ab initio trainer where the costs of fuel and oil would be much much lower than the current flight school standard 172 . The ongoing maintenance and replacement costs are also far far lower.

Whether it is electric, solar, IC, or Dilithium Crystals does not matter. There is room for everything if it works. Regardless of the power source (or no power source, because glider training works really well too), flight training at drastically lower cost is desperately needed to increase the number of new students. Just getting new people into any part of the pipeline using any flavor of flying machine is what needs to happen. I hate to say this because I'm kinda old-school at heart, but I think the feds should give kids a little credit for computer sims toward their training. Not because you can learn to fly on a computer, but because it would make the kids think their computer experience gave them a leg up and was worth something in the real world.

Old people want to fly w/o a medical and kids want everything they operate to be computer controlled. Allowing the C-150 to be Light Sport would have helped the old guy numbers. Approving all small aircraft would help more. Something that simple is very unlikely with a government that wants to control all aspects of life. Solar, electric, and small internal combustion engines can help, but no company will manufacture at such low numbers something that costs less than $100,000.00. We had forty and fifty hp Taylorcraft and Cub type airplanes years ago. Energy management techniques had to be employed to fly them. Kids who want a tricked out dash in their string flown kite are not going to want to learn the energy management necessary to fly low power to weight aircraft. Gliders cost a lot to train in and get up and motor gliders are way too expensive.

All that negative said, I hope something works. Anybody can buy a C-150 cheaper than a new car. But the government doesn't hate the idea of anybody driving a new car. They are equally simple to operate and a C-150 is at least as safe. When the nation of Israel made Judge Samuel ask God for a king, God told him they would get their king. He also warned that they wouldn't like everything about it.

If you look at the historical real-world results in terms of financial cost (and the quality of pilots created). I believe you will find that glider training is the undisputed king. Politics and big picture good vs. evil aside for a moment, the glider training in Europe in the 1930's and 40's created an enormous number of qualified pilots at a fraction of the cost of powered aircraft training.

If you make a list of the 120 top scoring fighter aces of all time, you will find that each and every one of them learned to fly in gliders, in the same country, under the same "primary glider" initial training system. As we continue down the list of flying aces (an imperfect but clear indicator of better than average flying skills), you will notice an occasional person from a different country, who might or might not have been trained in gliders... but you should notice that the overwhelming majority of pilots got their initial training the same way in gliders and in the same country. Here's the link I used to research the above statement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wo ... lying_aces

There are active and very successful glider programs in Europe today, because it still delivers the best education at the lowest cost. The best example is the Lithuanian primary training system, ( I've posted a video link to this in another previous thread ). Fortunately the Lithuanians and other EU countries have demonstrated that the success of a glider training program is not tied to or dependent on the same politics as the previous example. The Litthuanians developed an exceptionally good system, and children as young as 8 or 9 are flying the primary gliders by themselves safely (under tightly controlled parameters). Most importantly, they do this at a far lower cost.

Of equal or greater importance IMHO, training in gliders teaches the same type of energy management and hand-flying skills that Contactflying (and other old-school aviator types) teaches. You make better aviators who learned about the airplane before they ever saw an instrument panel.

The only big problem with glider training is that it takes a little bit of a paradigm shift, and a commitment on the part of the airport management/ownership to not treat it like an annoying and inconvenient pest that is interfering with "normal" airport operations and avgas sales.

I agree with EZ Flap that gliders would be a good way to train most pilots, if it could be done cheaply. Why are so few inexpensive ground tow systems in use here? Supply and demand and export to other countries have driven the price of my $10,000 Pawnee in 1979 up to $80,000 today. Not for an equally new, but for the exact same airplane. And it burns 15 gph.

The Germans got ready for their revenge of Versailles with glider training, which did not violate the treaty.

I also agree with EZflap and he made me feel better about my training and experience. Coming to this forum I felt like I had the least flying experience and time of anyone else here so basically just read the posts and not contribute until I saw this video posted by courierguy on the thread "Best approach".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va-DtQn ... e=youtu.be

I posted on that thread after watching the video....

"Just watching the set up for that landing had my toes curled. The stunted, windblown trees on that ridge tell me the prevalent wind direction, and had it been blowing there would have been a nasty rotor on that side. My hang gliding perspective."

As it turned out the pilot that landed on that ridge is also a HG pilot and has launched from the same ridge. He knew the only time he could land was during no wind conditions.


This has my interest, the Song U/L motorglider that Randall Fishman has converted to electric. The surface area of the wing could support 2 kw of thin film solar, thus provide the "speedy" cruise of 38 kt on just solar. Add enough lithium batteries for a climb to altitude (or find thermals for a free ride up) and those same panels are producing more power due to lower temperature and pollution. At 12,000' that IAS of 38 kt becomes a more cross country friendly 47 kt TAS and you still have a 25 to 1 glide. The performance of an electric motor isn't effected by altitude as an ICE is w/o turbocharging.

Am I being just a silly dreamer? Speed takes hp, and I don't need speed. While it takes 15 kw to climb at 400 fpm, it only takes 2 kw to cruise at 38 kt. Plus you can look for ridge lift, thermals, and other forms learned from gliding.

Right now I have currently (pun intended) have 6,000 KWH hrs credit with my utility, more or less. This is due to making more power then I use on an annual basis. So for me anyways, a "solar powered airplane" would be a battery operated one that I then recharge once back on the ground. No matter that the solar power was from 6 months ago, it would still be free and produced by me, just stored meanwhile in the grid system. Getting to where we are cruising around in a battery powered planed with the ADDITIONAL load of enough solar panels to make a difference is on a whole different level (no pun intended), just a lot more hi techy right now, impractical on any kind of half ass budget anyway, then a relatively simple pure battery powered plane, recharged by ground mounted solar panels (thin film or whatever, point being they stay on the ground). But heck, with the current low prices for mo gas, and projected to stay that way for awhile, I'll stick with the Rotax.

[quote="EZFlap"]If you look at the historical real-world results in terms of financial cost (and the quality of pilots created). I believe you will find that glider training is the undisputed king. Politics and big picture good vs. evil aside for a moment, the glider training in Europe in the 1930's and 40's created an enormous number of qualified pilots at a fraction of the cost of powered aircraft training.

If you make a list of the 120 top scoring fighter aces of all time, you will find that each and every one of them learned to fly in gliders, in the same country, under the same "primary glider" initial training system. As we continue down the list of flying aces (an imperfect but clear indicator of better than average flying skills), you will notice an occasional person from a different country, who might or might not have been trained in gliders... but you should notice that the overwhelming majority of pilots got their initial training the same way in gliders and in the same country. Here's the link I used to research the above statement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wo ... lying_aces.[/quot


EZ: I totally agree that learning to fly gliders is a great way to learn to fly, whether you're already a powered pilot or not.

But, the logic you cite above is pretty faulty. As any good misleading data point, there is some truth to the facts that you assert, but.......your conclusion is waaaaay off the mark, and quite misleading.

Virtually all the top fighter aces of all time are Luftwaffe Why? Because they were engaged on more fronts than any other nation during WW II and because they were at war longer than any other country in that conflict. And, that conflict made the vast majority of aces.

So, why did all those guys learn to fly in gliders? Not because it was cheaper....not at all. In fact, all those folks, while learning to fly gliders also flew the tow planes, of which they had many....Jungmeisters, Jungmann, etc. The Germans did this because they were prohibited from operating powered aircraft (except for glider tow airplanes) by the peace accords from WW I, which they lost. The western countries were naive enough to think this would prevent the Germans from training combat pilots.

So, the Luftwaffe pilots training in gliders wasn't done because it made them better pilots, but rather because that was the only avenue by which they could train the most pilots.

Did it make better pilots? Perhaps. But, again, the reason there were so many Luftwaffe aces was that they were at it for a long time, and there were target rich environments for them to operate in, at least until the last year or so of the war. I would point out that many of the top aces were shot down.....so somebody, at least on one day, was a better pilot than they were. And, that person didn't train in a glider.

Finally, fuel cost is a relatively small portion of the cost of flight training. Look at the cost of glider training......if fuel costs were so large a percentage of flight training, glider training would be really cheap, but it's not.

In fact, the big percentage of flight training is the instructor, insurance, and most of all, infrastructure, including the purchase/lease of the aircraft (and gliders aren't cheap), hangar rental, a "school" facility to brief and train, etc.

Fuel is expensive, no doubt, but lowering the cost of flight training by that percentage wouldn't effect new signups a bit, I'd bet.

Sorry, folks, young people aren't signing up to learn to fly for several reasons:

Jobs: There are few high paying jobs in aviation.....the ones that are out there have a lot of folks seeking them. Competition is tough. And, flying jobs aren't glamorous, as they once were. And, even the high paying jobs in aviation are low paying compared to many other occupations.

Flying is hard: It takes a lot of time, study and focus to learn to fly. A young person can go buy a four wheeler/snowmobile/jet ski/etc today and be adventuring tomorrow at full speed. Aviation takes time, money and WORK. Many young folks today are into instant gratification. Aviation is not that.

MTV

This presentation at the Davinci Institute addresses perpetual flight for UAV and to GA interests, solar electric flight. Please trust me, I wouldn't post a video of this length if I didn't think it had very high merit for the GA community.

Glider training makes better stick and rudder pilots, who will have better control over their aircraft compared to students who train using the mroe modern methods. Gliders will not make anyone better prepared to operate the newest Garmin G9000X, or allow them to pass their commercial and instrument written tests more easily.

Aircraft towing represented only a small percentage of the glider training in Germany in the 1930's and 40's. A much larger portion of it was done using hillside "bungee launch", winch tow, etc.

My comments and opinions and "conclusion" were based on the concept that ground launching (car tows, winch tows, etc.) are a lot less expensive than aero tows. You can give new students their first several hours of flight time using these methods, saving the acquisition/mortgage/fuel/operating/insurance/piloting cost of the towplane. The acquisition cost of a (theoretical example) production "primary training glider" would be 1/10 the cost of a 172. With lower acquisition costs comes lower insurance cost, another big line item in the budget of any training system.

A basic primary glider can be built with about $2500 in materials at today's prices. That glider can be used to solo a hundred kids before it's in need of a rebuild. You can go all the way up through solo and beyond by launching this glider with a car tow, for about a dollar's worth of gas per launch. Even if the lawyers force you to do the initial training in a two place primary glider, and you have to have a CFI sitting there, you still save a fortune compared to powered aircraft.

When I said "paraidign shift", one of the things I was talking about was that both the previous German method, and the modern Lithuanian method, have the aircraft built by the club members and students. As an added benefit the students learn how to build, repair, and understand the mechanics of aircraft. Not required for flight training but it sure makes a better aviator overall. In fairness, this could also apply to students building powered trainers, but that is indeed much more expensive.

My comments were not intended to indicate I think gliders could replace powered aircraft training altogether. What I am saying is that a ton of money can be saved by using gliders to teach initial basic control, some part of the airwork, get a kid soloed, and get the added benefit of the kid having a better "feel" for airflow and seat-of-the-pants stuff.

If you didn't like the idea of using combat victories as an indicator of the value of glider training, then I'll try to relate it to other types of flying:

Before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, and before he landed a kinda fast tricky little motorglider called the X-15, he soloed in a glider (at my old stomping grounds in Tehachapi, CA).

Before Jimmy Doolittle did his STOL-Valdez takeoff from a boat in a B-25, and before he became the only person to have enough feel and stick skills to survive flying the Gee Bee, he built and trained himself to fly in a primary glider.

Before Orville and Wilbur got into the record books, they actually learned to build and fly in gliders. Their inspiration and mentor was a European glider pilot named Otto Lilienthal, the first person to develop a way to control an aircraft.

The two most famous examples of airliners making "miraculous" emergency landings after an inflight catastrophe, with no loss of life (USAir-Hudson River and the "Gimli Glider" in Canada) were made possible by the fact that the captains were sailplane pilots.

I happened to be eating lunch in a restaurant that had a TV on the day Scully went water skiing. While people were still standing on the wing waiting to be rescued, I was telling everyone "bet he is or was a glider pilot". On the other hand, the last disaster flight, that recently went down in the China Sea, probably wasn't. Same with the pilot who impacted short of the runway at Oakland, just a wild guess but I'd bet money on it.

Again, I totally agree that learning to fly gliders will make anyone a better powered plane pilot. My point was simply that your "fighter ace" argument was far more than a stretch......

So, you seriously think that building, then learning to fly gliders will recruit more pilots into our population???? As I noted, aviation already faces the challenge of the attraction of instant gratification, which is available in so many other activities for our young folks today. So, adding to the length of time it takes to build a glider, then learning to fly it......yeah, that'll work.

Also, take a look at the glider instructors out there. How many of those are youngsters, vs old coots? Not many young glider instructors, I'm guessing. Hard to earn a living flight instructing, but I'm guessing that in most parts of the world it would be impossible to even break even.

And, teaching primary training in gliders would probably be restricted to very limited segments of the country.

Finally, once one learns to fly in a glider, they would still have to learn to fly a powered aircraft to function as a commercial or even as a practical recreational flyer. That transition would certainly go faster with someone already glider rated, but it would not be cheap in any case.....and now, you've reduced the amount of training being done in those very expensive 172s.

I know.....this scheme would draw so many new pilots that they'd be waiting in line to check out in those 172s....

MTV

I know several glider instructors - young ones. They belong to clubs and don't do it to make a living - they do it cause they love it and get some reimbursement for their time. There's barely a living to be had in any form of aviation these days it seems.

soyAnarchisto wrote:I know several glider instructors - young ones. They belong to clubs and don't do it to make a living - they do it cause they love it and get some reimbursement for their time. There's barely a living to be had in any form of aviation these days it seems.

True, but how does a young pilot build that all important flight time? Fortunately or unfortunately, many if not most commercial pilots (that is, folks actually earning their living with their certificates) built time via flight instructing.

That and lots of Top Ramen......

Glider time doesn't count for much when you're trying to get to that all important ATP.

But, hey, a lot of Asian countries are paying to have their youngsters taught to fly. Maybe in future those will be the folks up front in your US registered 787.

MTV