craneplaneguy
10 kW
I flew to West Yellowstone MT, via the Grand Tetons, this weekend, in my little homebuilt kitplane. It's nothing high tech, mostly aluminum and fabric construction, with a chrome moly fuselage. Slow too, for an airplane. The E Montague folder came in very handy as usual once on the ground, as the airport is quite a ways from town.
BUT, it has a tremendous duration, on it's 35 gallon capacity of regular car gas (total, rarely filled) well over 8 hours, with reserves. This flight was 4 hrs of flight time, 2 there and 2 back, though different routes. Once back home I had over half of my fuel capacity left, I could have made the flight again..... purely from a practical viewpoint, this is very handy, not to mention safer. I started thinking, what electric plane could do that, that is currently available? None that I know of, not even close, and at any price! I was surpised to have this thought, as I am excited about e flight as most, and will continue to be so, I just thought it was indicative of how much more work needs to be done before they will challenge an ICE powered machine as a practical traveling machine. It will happen I'm sure, but we're not there yet.
BUT, it has a tremendous duration, on it's 35 gallon capacity of regular car gas (total, rarely filled) well over 8 hours, with reserves. This flight was 4 hrs of flight time, 2 there and 2 back, though different routes. Once back home I had over half of my fuel capacity left, I could have made the flight again..... purely from a practical viewpoint, this is very handy, not to mention safer. I started thinking, what electric plane could do that, that is currently available? None that I know of, not even close, and at any price! I was surpised to have this thought, as I am excited about e flight as most, and will continue to be so, I just thought it was indicative of how much more work needs to be done before they will challenge an ICE powered machine as a practical traveling machine. It will happen I'm sure, but we're not there yet.