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World's fastest electric plane RR powered


David Ovenden
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3 hours ago, kc said:

Who will be the first to make a model of this?   Hope they put a scale electric power unit in and not a glow!  


It’s not a new airframe, it’s basically an electrified Nemesis NXT unlimited racer. There have been a few of these modelled over the years and at least 1 ARTF version from FlyFly

 

Edited by MattyB
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47 minutes ago, Cuban8 said:

Can't fault the effort and technology, but IMHO it's another very specialist blind alley.

Bit like the Schneider Trophy races.  They went nowhere!  Just another specialist blind alley.

Oh wait, they led to the development of the Merlin and Spitfire. 

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4 hours ago, Peter Jenkins said:

Bit like the Schneider Trophy races.  They went nowhere!  Just another specialist blind alley.

Oh wait, they led to the development of the Merlin and Spitfire. 

Not a fair comparison. I wasn't thinking about the 500 hp motor or snazzy aerodynamics, but as usual, the hopeless energy density of the batteries and poor duration. They conveniently ignore all that. Yes, fantastic performance for a short time I agree, but from a back of a fag packet calculation and good old Google, their heavy batteries are the equivalent of a tiny petrol tank containing only a few litres of the good stuff. Not exactly going to get you across continents or even comfortably between airfields for those expensive cups of coffee. If that's not a blind alley, then what is?

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It is the ancillary stuff, the innovation and problem solving that comes out of it where, in general the benefits lay.

Fuelling is the main issue for all electric powered transport and is probably going to remain that way for sometime.

I seem to recall a ceramic battery being hailed as the next best thing a couple of years ago, but that seems to have disappeared off the radar, unless of course the military industry have it. 

Don't forget military applications do filter out to the commercial market and vice versa

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16 minutes ago, Cuban8 said:

Not a fair comparison. I wasn't thinking about the 500 hp motor or snazzy aerodynamics, but as usual, the hopeless energy density of the batteries and poor duration. They conveniently ignore all that. Yes, fantastic performance for a short time I agree, but from a back of a fag packet calculation and good old Google, their heavy batteries are the equivalent of a tiny petrol tank containing only a few litres of the good stuff. Not exactly going to get you across continents or even comfortably between airfields for those expensive cups of coffee. If that's not a blind alley, then what is?

You are still missing the point.  The Schneider Trophy were single seat sea planes that were designed to fly round a triangular course as fast as possible.  None of them had any commercial or military application.  Their importance was in the lessons learned on aerodynamics, engine design, cooling and so on.  I suggest that you are looking at this from the wrong angle.  You are of course, entitled to do that.  I prefer to look at this from the lessons that are learned.  I entirely agree that using batteries is not going to be the answer for a commercial application but there are other technologies that have been developed along the way.  Some of them will be kept as trade secrets until, one day, their time comes.

 

As Zflyer points out, often the military will have a pressing need that drives this forward.  Interestingly, there has been quite a feed across from civil to military recently although quite often it is because the military is prepared to risk the cost of funding some of these way out ideas.  For example, when the RB 199 was proposed, the issue of cooling the turbine blades had not been fully solved yet they were being designed to operate beyond the temperature of the gas stream flowing over them.  That's often why military developments take so long and cost so much - the target is way outside where the state of the art sits.

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32 minutes ago, Zflyer said:

I seem to recall a ceramic battery being hailed as the next best thing a couple of years ago, but that seems to have disappeared off the radar,

These so-called innovations which are much heralded as the next battery technology are always from someone who has made something small-scale work in a lab but would need a lot of capital injected to get anywhere a marketable product. They are just a call for investment, which mostly never comes. That's why they disappear into the dustbin of history.

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1 hour ago, Andy Stephenson said:

These so-called innovations which are much heralded as the next battery technology are always from someone who has made something small-scale work in a lab but would need a lot of capital injected to get anywhere a marketable product. They are just a call for investment, which mostly never comes. That's why they disappear into the dustbin of history.

 

I was still working when there was a great deal of fuss in some of the technical mags about high temperature superconductors which would transform all aspects of power electricity from transmission to motors.  IIRC 'high temperature' was something like 50 deg K (ie -220 deg C!).  It would indeed be wonderful if high currents could flow through wires with zero resistance but that's not happened yet. (I retired in 1995!). 

 

However, many things have resulted from apparently useless research and experimental accidents so perhaps Royce's should continue the research into full-size electric flight and see what happens 🙂

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10 hours ago, Cuban8 said:

Not a fair comparison. I wasn't thinking about the 500 hp motor or snazzy aerodynamics, but as usual, the hopeless energy density of the batteries and poor duration. They conveniently ignore all that. Yes, fantastic performance for a short time I agree, but from a back of a fag packet calculation and good old Google, their heavy batteries are the equivalent of a tiny petrol tank containing only a few litres of the good stuff. Not exactly going to get you across continents or even comfortably between airfields for those expensive cups of coffee. If that's not a blind alley, then what is?

There are some large scale experimental projects out there with serious money behind them. For instance there is a Dash 8 regional airliner flying with one of its two engines replaced by an electric motor powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. Light aircraft trainers are emerging with electric motor options. Pipistral Velis Electro and Diamond Aircraft for example. 
There are several lines of research under way using different battery technologies. Metal/Air, solid state to name but two. Some may come up against an insurmountable problem (blind alley) only to reemerge when some bright spark (sorry!) comes up with a work arround some time later. Developing a new battery is not just about charge density but cycle life, internal resistance, safety and cost are other considerations. The reason why so much money is available for research is the prize if successful is very great.

Edited by Piers Bowlan
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