Thalass

Congratulations!

Awesome! The more companies working on the battery problem, the quicker lithium-air batteries will become mass produced and thus cheap. :big_grin:

Trainer: Rans S7 Fun: Fokker B.II flying boat (Or, at least, a two seat RAA sized version :P) image People Mover: Space Ship Three (or Four, or whatever version achieves orbit). Move people anywhere in the world, really really fast!

And my motorcycle helmet! Or a similar system like that PicoP laser projector thingy.

I agree. The wage for a LAME hasn't changed and, in fact, has gone down by about 5-10k, in the ten years since i started my apprenticeship. Meanwhile house prices are about 4x the 2000 price, and fuel is a good 50% on top of 2000. While engineers were struggling to get 3%, the CEO gets 25% without question. It's great for moral.

Turboplanner: It'd be much the same with an aircraft in a hangar, or a parking area with plugs in the ground. Jump out, plug in, walk away. Ozzie: That's the great thing. As long as the voltage is similar, any battery chemistry will do. You'd just have to reprogram the charger for the different profile. So the marginally practical batteries of today can be replaced with something awesome without a great deal of fuss.

Oh I know. The flight from Perth to Toronto is horrible in cattle class. 36 hours travel time, including stopovers and stuff. I'd rather spend a week in an airship, where you have a bed and can wander around. Or 90 minutes in a cramped suborbital airliner :P Either way would be better than the guts of a 747 or A380 for that long.

Damn. I was hoping they were using lithium-air. I want those for my bike! LiFePO4 is great, and all, but Lithium-air will be the game changer.

I've been laughing at that lately. I have a Nokia N82 from 2007, which has a 5MP camera, and a second camera facing the user! I even have skype on it! Revolutionary! :P

Yeah, pretty much Shags.There were mp3 players before the ipod came about, but they were expensive (I actually bought a minidisk player because SD cards were tiny and expensive in comparison), and the ipod popularised them and brought the price down. I'll give them credit: They do a great user interface. But as far as performance and ability goes, the ipod/iphone isn't that great. And as a linux-nerd i can't stand the draconian restrictions on what an owner can do with the device they purchased. As far as i can see, most people buy them to be cool. There isn't anything that an iphone can do that you can't do with other systems, if you're willing to put the effort in to figure it out. :P

Good luck to them. I wonder what battery chemistry they're using?

I'm much the same. If i'm up on a scissorlift or something I'm fine, until i lean over the edge or something! It's more a fear of falling. If there's a fence, or even better if i'm strapped in to a seat, i'm fine. But my mum is terrified of flying, no matter what. I suppose everyone is different.

Hi there, eh? (haha) If I'm going to get my ultralight license here in Australia, I'm going to have to get a conversion to the Canadian rules when my wife finally wins and we move there. So my question is: Has anyone converted an ultralight license to the Canadian regs? I would hope that being a part of the commonwealth would make it somewhat simpler - it helped when my wife emigrated (immigrated?) here from Canada. Of course that's not a certainty!

haha yeah. When I was an apprentice at Sydney airport, I enquired about bringing my dad and my brother airside for a tour. But that wasn't allowed. Never mind that my dad is in the navy (and like Russ would have higher clearance) and my brother was about 14 at the time. Sheesh.

The issue with the cars is that you might be smuggling stuff (explosives, even) onto the airport. Stupid, I know, but yeah. Even at a small airport, because once something is airside it doesn't get screened until it goes back landside. So you could stash something on your bugsmasher, then fly to sydney and asplode it. That's part of it, at least, also they can charge you for an airside vehicle permit. Moneymoneymoney. I have an ASIC, but I got it through work. I've only been asked for it once, and that was by a subcontracted security guard (she said that the WAC 'safety officers' had palmed that duty off to them because they were too busy). Never been asked by a safety officer (haha), or federal cop. Even with the pass, I can't just wander around wherever I want. There's a clause about 'due cause' or 'legitimate reasons' or something like that. I haven't been to an airport outside of work duties since high school so I don't know how handy it would be for an RAA pilot. Last time I went to Jandakot was in 1998 or so. :P

I don't know where I got that 100hp limit thing stuck in my head! Thanks, Heon.

I've just been reading the June issue of Kitplanes, and up the back in the "completions" section there is a Cricri built and owned by a guy in New Zealand. According to the article: As it is registered as a microlight in New Zealand, no multi-engine rating is required. This to me sounds like the NZ equivalent of an RAA Aircraft can be multi engined! Obviously the Cricri is no Twin Otter or anything, but I found it interesting that our kiwi cousins allow such a thing. The guy's site is Cricri aerobatic aircraft builders Page : Home It would be good if the RAA allowed something similar here - even if there was still a 100hp limit (which I think applies to RAA aircraft, right?) which would mean 50hp per engine. If nothing else, it'd make flying boat/amphibian design a bit easier, and would bring the CoG down a bit. :P (Actually, having a quick look at the RAA site and the casa regs linked there: An aircraft registered under 95.10 can be multi engined (which possibly would include the cricri), but while 95.55 1.5 specifies single engine-single prop, the RAA Technical Manual section 3.3.1 uses the plural "engines". It's all a bit confusing.) Thoughts? It's a nifty little aeroplane, though I'd get a bit claustrophobic, I think.

All the smart engineers (and me) will be on orbit doing turnarounds for SpacEx or Virgin Galactic. :D

Qantas claim that they've never lost an aircraft to an accident. But they have spent months and millions repairing an aircraft that ought to have been scrapped, just to get it flying again for a few months before 'retiring' it. I know of this happening twice. :P Of course there are going to be defects coming out of heavy maintenance. In theory the aircraft will be as good as new after a C or D check, but the schedule is constantly being squeezed to shorter and shorter times, and tighter and tighter budgets. We can expect maybe 5 or 10 defects on MEL after a major check. But 450! Holy moly. As it has been said: You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

Very nice aircraft! But there does seem to be 'something' missing. But if it's not needed, then it's not missing! haha.

I certainly agree that the drag from a ram air turbine or similar would be greater than the power it produces. The same sort of thing is suggested by people with cars: "Why don't you put a generator on the back wheels while you drive the front wheels with a motor?" To which the correct response is "Can you stand with both feet in a bucket and pull yourself off the ground?" However, other than weight, an on board genset shouldn't be much problem. The generator doesn't have to produce the full 100hp all the time. In fact the best way to do it would be to have the generator/engine combination only large enough to produce slightly more power than what your motor consumes at cruise. Then have a battery pack only large enough to provide the difference for takeoff and climb. With a smaller pack the weight wouldn't be so great. This is, of course, much more complex than a straight EV or straight petrol aircraft, but it ought to be much more efficient. The only example of this that I can think off the top of my head is a Rav4 EV built by toyota for a few years in the USA. It was capable of travelling "highway speeds" but only for a short distance (about 50km, if I recall correctly), so a few clever owners built a genset trailer with a motorcycle engine, fuel tank, and generator on board. This produced enough power to drive at ~110km/h for hours, and in fact was still more fuel efficient than a regular petrol Rav4 of the same year. Anyway, it would be an interesting challenge. Especially with the tough weight limit on an RAA Aircraft. And aerodynamics play a much bigger part in an aircraft. A jabiru might be easier than a drifter.

I've been wondering about this for a while, ever since I saw that yuneec thing. I was wondering about whether the one engine - one prop rule applies to on-board generators. If the electric motor drives the prop, but a small (say, 500cc) engine drives a generator to keep the batteries topped up. Since the engine is small, and is only driving a generator, it can run at a constant rpm in it's most efficient range, so it'll still be more efficient than an engine driving a prop at various rpm ranges. The same applies to cars.

I thought KLM was the worlds oldest continuously operational airline? :P

Out of curiosity: How does the passenger affect CoG? Being under the wing I imagine it doesn't affect it much.

Only if you aren't holding it!