Chip Yates Electric Aircraft (unofficial) Speed Record

Great achievement, pity about the lies and crap about Yates supposed TTXGP entry. Yates bike wasn't "banned" for being too powerful, it was ineligible for the TTXGP because it was 20 kg (~ 44 lbs) over the maximum weight limit as I recall. Had he built the bike to the right weight for the competition he'd have been allowed to enter - he just chose not to.

Edited to add:

Just been checking up. This isn't a world record at all, apparently. It seems he just read his airspeed off the ASI and then made the claim, so no ratification from the FAI, no timed run through a measured distance, nothing to show what speed he actually managed to reach and not by any stretch an official record of any sort. His ASI (or GPS) wouldn't have been giving true airspeed, he'd have needed to fly a reciprocal course over a set distance to get that, both to correct for wind and to correct for pitot, density, temperature and instrument errors. ASI's are notoriously inaccurate, which is why the speed they give is always referred to as "Indicated Air Speed", or IAS, just to make it clear that it won't be the true air speed or (TAS).

Not taking anything away from his effort, he clearly has put a lot of work and money into it and it shows promise. Maybe he can get the reliability and endurance up to the point where he can really break a world record with a bit more work.
 
the landing looked quite hard, quite an achievement though, I wonder why the wrote "experimental" on the inside of the
cockpit canopy? Just to keep you on your toes?
 
whatever said:
the landing looked quite hard, quite an achievement though, I wonder why the wrote "experimental" on the inside of the
cockpit canopy? Just to keep you on your toes?

The LongEz does tend to land pretty fast and hard, especially at high density altitude (and it looked to me as if the airfield was probably hot and high). "Experimental" has to be there because the aircraft's in the US Experimental category, a non-approved, non-certified aircraft category that includes home builts like this. The word is supposed to convey a message to passengers that the aircraft isn't approved to any recognised safety/structural standards. Here we have to put a warning placard in home builts that makes it clear they aren't approved to an international standard, does much the same thing.

For an air speed record to be valid the aircraft has to be flown dead level over a measured distance, for all we know Yates could have just pushed to nose down a bit to get the speed up - doesn't take much in something as slippery as the LongEz to get it to go pretty fast with no power at all.
 
Jeremy Harris said:
For an air speed record to be valid the aircraft has to be flown dead level over a measured distance, for all we know Yates could have just pushed to nose down a bit to get the speed up - doesn't take much in something as slippery as the LongEz to get it to go pretty fast with no power at all.

Agreed regarding the unofficial record. The cool part for me is that they electrified what I consider a very efficient airframe, to further advance electric flight. Here is a link to another article with a picture of the UQM motor - what a beast. Put that on your bike and ride it :shock:

Looks like the volocopter also made its debut at Oshkosh. Not sure I'm ready to jump into that thing in its current form. :?

http://www.jsonline.com/business/plugging-into-a-new-era-of-flight-ba68tou-163969096.html
 

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The landing was hard because he lost power. At 4:13 he says "I've got issues with my batteries so I'm going to enter the pattern..."

And at 4:58 he says "...and I've lost power"

Awesome plane nonetheless! They seem to have all the same issues as us more grounded e-folk :p
 
crusoe said:
The landing was hard because he lost power. At 4:13 he says "I've got issues with my batteries so I'm going to enter the pattern..."

And at 4:58 he says "...and I've lost power"

Awesome plane nonetheless! They seem to have all the same issues as us more grounded e-folk :p

Losing power has no effect on a landing - you land with power off normally in a very light aircraft, go stand by the runway at any airfield and you'll hear and see power being cut way up on finals by a lot of folk, especially ultralights who pretty much always land power off.

I have always made glide approaches, with the engine just ticking over doing nothing, and every pilot will have been taught this. Yates made a constant radius approach, the classic WWII fighter, no power, approach, and just landed pretty much as a LongEz lands much of the time, hard and fast, no doubt exacerbated by what I suspect was a pretty high density altitude.

Sure some light aircraft, like airliners and heavier light aircraft, make long, shallow angle, powered approaches, but it's not needed and is discouraged at a lot of airfields because of the additional noise nuisance it creates. The only time I've ever made a powered approach was when flying seaplanes, where landing is a lot nicer if you maintain a slow, constant rate, descent to the water, particularly if it's a still day and the water has a glassy surface, making it hard to see where the surface really is.
 
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