31–40 of 64 posts
And surely people are working on them, but you don't hear about that as much as you do automobiles. Anyone know anything about this?
An electric powerplant with effectively one moving part should also have dramatically lower mantenence cost than a traditional, gasoline-powered engine of more than 1,000 components I see this sort of statement made about electric cars also, and I think it's really not true. Modern internal combustion engines are very reliable, and need very little maintenance. Yes they need oil changes every so often, and I guess th…
What about this one: http://www.pipistrel.si/news/wattsup-the-new-2seat-electric-... Not an expert - don't know if they can be compared and the article lacks any actual specs to compare by, but the pipistrel's electric plane seems to be much cheaper. "Pipistrel expects to bring the final product to the market in 2015 with a target price below 100,000 EUR."
My concern about training on an aircraft of this fashion is that you get no exposure to controls such as carb heat, fuel mixture, etc. I wonder if a distinction will be made (in the not so far future) between getting rated on a combustion plane vs. electric? Much like you get rated for high-performance or twin engines today.
Serious question from someone who knows very little about planes. Do they seriously still have new carbuereuted planes? I can understand if it's a Cessna from the 50's, 60's, 70's, but I'm surprised they haven't been converted to EFI just from an efficiency and reliability stand point. Does that have to do with all the certification required for aircraft? (ie, if you change the engine, the aircraft has to go through…
Does anyone have more specifics about the actual capabilities of the prototype? I'm skeptical they're able to get 3 hours of flight time out of a battery pack without sacrificing just about all the weight capacity for things like... a pilot. It's great to see that companies are actively working on electric-powered flight, though, especially in the small aircraft space where it has high potential. Also a small beef wi…
There used to be plenty of qualified pilots before the knee-jerk Colgan 1500 hour rule.
Now an ATP is required to start as an airline pilot, so there's basically no qualified pilots available who aren't already flying for an airline.
All of the regional jet airlines will be filing bk in the next year because of this - their planes will sit on the ground for lack of pilots.
An electric powerplant with effectively one moving part should also have dramatically lower mantenence cost than a traditional, gasoline-powered engine of more than 1,000 components I see this sort of statement made about electric cars also, and I think it's really not true. Modern internal combustion engines are very reliable, and need very little maintenance. Yes they need oil changes every so often, and I guess th…
GA engines require a teardown inspection on a pretty regular basis. Not only that, but the liability tail for GA emphasizes the use of older designs.
Very interesting. But sadly the article mentions the same old line: not enough airline pilots. The truth is that the airlines are not willing to pay for airline pilots. That's how capitalism works. You want workers? You pay workers. Simple as that.
And don't get me started about capitalism - no businessman in this world wants a level playing field.