Has anyone been tinkering with electric ultralight flight?
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Has anyone been tinkering with electric ultralight flight?
OK, I'll bight. There are many, many, many, many-did I say many- for a few years now from ready to purchase ultralight's/lsa's now to various levels of development. Just search "electric powered ultralight aircraft" and knock yourself out for the next few months learning about them. Some have been to Oshkosh.
Hmmm...do I give you a nice salmon supper, or do I teach you how to fish? I teach!!!
Good fishing hole: Google.com (there are others, too)
Bring up the Google search window, type "US electric powered ultralight aircraft" into the white box and hit the "Enter" key. Snoop around the results and see what you can learn. Some sites may contain links and references to other sites, so pore over them carefully. This technology is changing at a pretty good clip, so treat the older articles as historical and focus primarily on those less than a year old. If you don't have a good grasp of things electrical, you may find the learning curve a bit steep, so the level of your passion and commitment will determine the pace at which you get there.
Go fish!
COA:
Please review the question.
I asked about "electric LSA's available in the USA". I have searched, and have contacted the oft-cited manufacturers who advertise, but, in fact, do not have an electric LSA airplane available in the USA. (I do not consider a one-off experimental or prototype to be an available LSA.)
If you are better at searching the www and you (or anyone else) have a link to a dealer who has an electric LSA available in the USA, I would appreciate it if you would post it here.
Thank you.
BJC
Are you always this condescending? I asked if folks were actually working on a project themselves, not how to use a search window.
Still looking for an electric LSA available in the USA, as mentioned by FF and COA above.
Thanks,
BJC
Dopey me!!! Electric LSA's are still illegal in the US, per this recent article from Popular Mechanics:
Even as the federal government jump-starts electric cars with $2.4 billion in research funds, electric airplanes are getting held back. In fact, current Federal Aviation Administration rules prohibit electric motors in light sport aircraft, a class of planes typically flown by less experienced pilots. The FAA decrees that LSAs be powered only by reciprocating engines, a measure intended to keep high-powered turbine engines out of the hands of novice sport pilots. This rule is now thwarting the sale of electric airplanes in the United States. "We're reluctant to introduce new technology on a less experienced pilot population," says the FAA's Steve Flanagan, who helped write the LSA rules. "We need to get some more flight experience with electric motors." That position is frustrating to Randall Fishman, an ultralight pilot who's currently developing an electric two-seat sport plane, the ElectraFlyer-X. The $65,000 kit plane is being designed to LSA specifications so it can quickly go into production if and when the FAA gives electric airplane motors the okay.