thx
I could not find details about the battery capacity

What is the range? The bad thing about electro planes is they don't get lighter as the battery drains....the always have the same weight as flying with full tanks.
My gyro performs great with just me and 5 gal of gas....with a passenger and a full tank, you can really tell the difference.

Oscar has his EV heli flying for 15+ minutes - With the early kit version ...

until you can get 90 minutes it's a toy

exactly the same issues that I have had with my pre_rotator

the guy on the video says " we need to change the gear ratio so that the the motor rpm is increased, it will lower the torque and it will lower the amps"

finding the good balance is the key of all those electric system,

at the beginning it seems difficult but , in times it becomes natural to modify settings so that the good balance is found,

when the balance is found things begins to be ok, the controller is not over charged, same thing for the motor and the back pack ...

I am happy to see that because it show me that there is no magic in all of this...

this is what I had tried to explain to this bunch of RWF ass holes back when I would speak about my rotator project ... and of course the only thing they would reply was ... with my car starter I get 120 rpm .... it was useless to tell them that it was just a question doing doing the maths , finding the good balance and that we would get the rpm we wanted with very simple components available and relatively affordable ...

of course the only thing they are able to do is to speak of themselves and of their heroic past ...

it seems ridiculous of course ... but new batteries will arrive soon or later... the important thing is to master the rest of the system ...
in the mean time we can fly on petrol engines, but it is not a reason not to follow all the progress made in this field

But Giro.... with my car starter I get 120 rpm

Just stirring...

..

yes vance the predator is the best gyro in the world with the best possible pre-rotator

Hey there just reading through some threads and thought about this. One thing an electric gyro could do right now is be used as a comparatively cheap single seat training machine. The new Tesla Batteries (the 4630 batteries) have enough energy density for with 50kg of batteries, leaving 20% to protect the life of the battery give you about 16 minutes (Full power) on a machine with equivalent power to say a single seat 503 powered machine. That still seems like a toy but back when I was learning (and possibly you too) we spend a few hours in the gyroglider about 3-5 hours in a two seat powered (compare that to 20 hours dual at $250+ per hours some are charging) machine and the rest in your own single seat doing strip runs and gradually bigger (and higher hops). Most of this time was very limited power. I spend some hours taxiing getting used to rudder balancing on the mains usuing nothing like full power. When I did start to use full power it was at first for only seconds on just getting off then backing off again landing repeat, repeat, repeat. Gradually you held on power for longer getting ultimately to 80 or 100 foot then descending back to the runway from that height with almost no power. Then a tear drop then a circuit. So most of this was in short bursts 20 minutes at a time then a break. It strikes me a machine like that owned by a club could save thousands of dollars learning in one of the new machines at $250/hour. You'd also have a machine that had known handling qualities. My instructor used to test fly all our gyros and make sure we changed them until safe. Having a single seat training machine could be a good first use for an electric gyro and if its quieter and more reliable then that too would be of benefit. The motors are quite cheap its the batteries that cost a bit. But we're essentially talking about the new tesla batteries are 272wh/kg so 50kg batteries is 13.6kwh divide by 40kw (54 hp - don't know minimum power requirements so work off this for time being) and we get 0.34 of a hour or about 20 minutes at full power. We don't need to fly full power in fact in training - ground runs we do much less so even circuits you are descending during much of that so even if you could only get 15minutes (with reserve) that's at least 3 circuits. Enough for training. I derived 50 kg by subtracting the difference in weight of 54 hp electric motor (about 11-12kg) and remembering 40litres of fuel weights about 28kg for 40 liters. So build a 50kg battery count on 15 minutes at full power (probably get at least 30 mins average ground running). I think we'd have a good little training machine. Certainly cheaper than a rotax 912s. In theory I figure such a machine if built by a club and used for ground instruction charged at much less than dual instruction would save thousands off training. And you'd have learned to fly a machine solo that didn't have an empty weight of 265kg+.

Without infrastructure for support or a lot of spare batteries you'll have a lot of down time charging
In anything you got to get more bag for the buck then the competition

Gasoline you pour it in and go - minutes filling hours & hours going
Steam you had to prep the boiler and build pressure then go - half hour to get going all day to get there.
Batteries you had to charge then go - Day to charge for a few minutes

fixed costs continue to mount as the machine sits. Its got to pay for its keep. At this time the economics don't add up.
90 minutes at 100 HP with 3hr charge and it might work.

Respectfully disagree, not because I disagree with any particular point really those are issues but because of the reality of club flying. Typically we'd have maybe 4 to 8 students at any given time. It was not very common to have more than one guy doing powered training at any given time. Most of these had their own machines. If a guy has his own machine he can use that. Next 20 minutes remember is 20 minutes full power at 1000ft/min that's bloody high and for 90% of strip runs during this phase you are not even using 1/2 power in fact the first few hours is just rudder and basic control work. Battery in that case would probably last 60 mins. The egull has a Zero motor bike engine the same power as a 503 and about 50-60 kg of battery that flies for 1 hour and takes one hour to charge on 240 volts. so charging should only take an hour. We only trained in 20 minute bouts to avoid cognitive load so while a hour is much more than 5 minutes to re-fuel in reality in the clubs that did ground instruction the typical pattern was do 20 minutes take a break for at least 1/2 and hour then have another go. So in early stages this wouldn't be a problem as taxiing and just balancing is probably at best 1/2 power thus that 20 minutes could see two blokes do a run then charge for an hours break then go again or one bloke (more common) go take a break go again and then have a longer break. The instructor is going to want to debrief you after each set of runs and if they saw you do something really bad we'd often get them back in the glider or into a powered two seater and re-enforce that rule. Once you are onto powered hops you could expect at least 30 minutes of time and again that won't be used because you'll come back in and only have to partially charge the batteries to get back to full. The egull reference I saw the guy had two chargers. which combined charged the two banks of batteries in 1 hour. Less if you didn't empty them. So its not all day then fly for 15 minutes.

But yes if you had 2 or 3 blokes wanting to train all at once that would be a hassle unless you brought several battery packs (which would still be cheaper than paying for a guys $150000 machine). This is the only case where the numbers stack up and only because the type of ground training is short busts off full power followed by reduced or no power over a short period of time much of which was taxiing around to go back the other way so that 20 minutes was not flight time it was probably 10-12 minutes of flight time and probably only 2 or 3 at full power total if that. Its only at the end when doing your final strip runs and when full power would be on for 40 seconds and then doing circuits for a few minutes. As that happens very rarely I think a test case could be made for such a gyro for a club. electric engine is about $2000 batteries around $8000-$10000 for the 50kg of batteries so what's a 912 cost? Whats a two seater cost? Cost per charge on that battery is about $2.17 per charge so hourly charge (several battery charges lets say 3) is thus $6.51. Cost current 2 seat training is what $250 + per hour? At our club none of us did more than 5 hours dual (most did it in 3) because we did significant time in a powered single seater and in the glider. A single seat machine capable of doing a couple of circuits would mean your total cost of dual training would go from about 20 hours to 5 a saving at $250/hr of $3500 each student. If they can do it in 3 then they would be saving $4250! Isn't that worth possibly having to wait your turn a bit?

From the two seat instructors point of view we have students who are trained in glider and some powered runs so they don't have to teach balance on mains, they don't have to teach stick control, blade management turns. What they do have to do is coordinated turns, engine out glides and landings and circuit procedures. This benefits them in that while they loose hours of training for each student they are at much less risk to their machines. Additionally if clubs and cheaper alternatives are available the pool of gyro pilots will go up and they'll have few hours per student but more students total.

Anyway just my opinion and happy to be wrong and genuinely interested in what I might have wrong cheers.

I can see your point Cameron... making very basic machines for learning ground running and rotor handling could be done in short lessons with electric machines... with the machines only really designed to do crow hops at the most... never a circuit

I had often thought of having simple 503 machines to do just that.

The batteries could also be able to be swapped out... when one gets depleted... just take it out and fit a fresh one.

My Sherman EUC weighs 40kg and has a 3600wh battery which gives a range at decent speed of about 100 miles... some of the bigger, new EUC's have 4800Wh batteries and weigh 55kg (just the battery about 30kg)... I could see a light weight gyro doing half hour lessons running up and down the strip... it could be very good

3 quote limit....

My biggest question is cycle life and overhauls - When Hiser helicopters were training at minimum we had 150 students divided into 37 aircraft - R-22, Enstrom, Bells, Hughes. cramming in oil changes at 25hr, 100hr/ annuals as needed with helicopters flying 10 hours a day. Can batteries take the abuse before failure... Dud or a flaming demise ???
Clubs are a different environment friendly relaxed - We had so many types of helicopters it was easy for the Japanese to get their ratings in R-22, R-22HP, R-22 Alpha, R-22 Bravo etc. [Nippon CAA rules] Hughes was 269, 269 A,B.C, 300,A,B,C - TH 55 and the rest. . . A whole different world - No wrongs just different

Maintenance requirements - cycle life - overhaul what would be the costs?

Yes and if 503's were still being built I'd still advocate for that. You can do a circuit of course in 5 minutes or so. My calculations were based on the current Tesla Batteries the new 4630's (and I happily acknowledge they may be hard to get). Batteries I could buy this minute are lower energy density. But if you decided to build one of these its going to take a year or so building as light a frame as possible to hold as many batteries as possible. In a few years as the solid state batteries factories get finished we'll have better options in fact we'll be getting to 40mins full power on those and batteries that can survive literally being completely flattened without damage etc. But if frogs had wings they wouldn't bump their arses a hoppin' as they say. There is also much hype. I'm inclined to believe only those stats where they are actually ramping up factories to build a specific battery and after all the testing has been carried out. Most press releases are dealing with universities writing a paper (which I read with interest too) about some level of energy density they have achieved over x time frame. And while I also tend to believe these papers are about half the time being done honestly (you have to go to the actual papers not the press releases which are pure promotion). I understand these are often being carried out in ideal conditions, often with button type batteries sometimes being tested in a vacuum etc). So while it may be possible to get 1250wh/kg as in the C02 Lithium batteries (which they managed to keep 80% charge capacity after over 500 charge cycles). These were carried out in a vacuum. Unless you plan on carrying and powering a vacuum chamber large enough to carry 50kg of those then we can't yet be sure they will ultimately be commercially viable. Many of the solid state and more promising chemistries have had issues with expansion. That is the way they operate causes them to expand a lot and contract a lot, this expansion and contraction had been a problem causing the batteries to physically get damaged over time. They seem to have found engineering solutions to these now but its taken time and hence they've been the holy grail like fusion energy that promises but never seems to come but they are now ramping up factories to build the first commercial solid state batteries. I personally take that as an indication that for some of the chemistries at least they have found viable solutions (or else why hundreds of millioins building factories specifically to make high volumes of these batteries). But we'll know for sure when they become commercial available (although test cells are available for some of these batteries).

Another issue is total power output vs continuous power output. Doing strip runs hops and a couple of circuits is one thing but there are two numbers we need to pay attention to on electric motors for gyros, total power and continuous power. Electric motors can put out busts of total power but can only produce X hp continuously so typically a 40kw engine might have only 20kw of continuous power. So much depends on how little power we can actually fly on and hence what total size motor we need. There are a wide variety of motors out there and you can always buy a bigger motor and down rate the total power in the speed controller. but obviously a motor producing 80kw will generally weight almost twice as much as one producing 40kw (because generally its two 40kw motors banged together in one case). So this additional weight then takes away from batteries carried. This might just mean the performance becomes a bit lower, now your gyro weighs as much as a VW say. That's not necessarily a bad thing but my idea is to prepare people for flying lighter machines so that's not my ideal but it is still workable. VW weighs in at about 80kg 503 about 35ish so that's a lot of extra batteries. But not my ideal. I want a training machine that has similar performance to 503.

Electric motors also off us some interesting possibilities. For example contra rotating props. Some regen is used in the Pipistral. We already have a steep glide ratio but people are often doing vertical descents to make a strip when too high, so doing some re-gen on the way down will give back some energy (not much but not nothing) but the benefit is actually being able to adjust glide angle while gaining some energy back in fact every-time you hit a bloody big thermal you could use this to harness some of that power for the battery. In my old VW I've hit thermals large enough to have me climbing at 1500ft/min on idle. Hell use it, stay in it gain some energy. being able to actually stop the motor dead and further reduce drag at a specific position (with a two bladed prop inline with the mast for example). The ability to add reverse thrust might allow us to build the gyro with no brakes. Or consider this such a battery pack is going to be probably about $8000-10000. The motor + controller about $2000-3000 depending on motor. So not significantly more expensive than a new 583 if you could still buy them and about 1/2 the cost of any sort of rotax 4 stroke. But parked in your shed for a week or two before your next fly it does nothing for you. I fly typically about 40-45 mins flights because I prefer hooning that cross country. So someone like me could buy two battery packs (you'd need to design a quick change mechanism). For less than the cost of a 912 for example but yes currently I couldn't even do the 40mins. That will come though although its probably 5-8 years away.
Another potential benefit is a battery pack that size parked at home could potentially be used as a power wall and actually pay for itself by storing solar and saving you from using the grid or getting next to nothing on pay in tariffs. My brother has a power wall and solar. It was expensive but will pay for itself over its life he can run air con till 6 in the morning in summer (if he only aircons his bedroom at night). So obviously you'd need some thinking and an electrician etc (my brother is an electrical engineer and says yes this is possible) but I don't think we are often thinking laterally enough about what this transition can do for us. Even just cost in fuel 503 is what 20+ l/hr? 20 x $1.74/hr charging is very very cheap by comparison.

Check out this interesting solution: you want 9:40 ish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXGGEmw87_8

Basically its a 60hp 4 stroke and they are experimenting with using an electric motor (another 60hp) for the top pulley of the re-drive. When engaged you get 120hp. Thus you would carry only a very small battery enough for a few minutes and use both on say take off or climb outs. So for a two seater this might be enough to do climb outs and if you only need 50hp to fly straight an level two up you could be actually charging the small battery with the remaining power for the next steep climb out. Thus battery weight doesn't become an issue you have a sort of super charging effect albeit only temporary etc. the rest of the time you are running a pretty normal 4 stroke engine. Image that in a single seater being able to have double hp for several short busts...

In short there are some interesting times ahead and I think we should be thinking about how we utilize these as they come. Motors are pretty much there already in that they have very high efficiencies so if you were to build an electric gyro today you could always add a newer more energy dense pack latter.

So in short very, very limited use cases now but these will get better over time. Eventually we'll have batteries big enough for my paddock bashing and in the long term proper range but those will be 10-15 years I suspect. But the technology like that hybrid system could give us a bit of the best of both worlds for a time until we get there.

What will be the ultimate, will be when they work out how to transmit electricity...

Electricity is only the movement of electrons... electrons are all around us (and everything)... it is just a case of harnessing those electrons and making them move

Imagine if we could use an electric motor and just plug it into some sort of flux capacitor and fly indefinitely... how awesome would that be

Beam me Scotty !
you'r right

A really really long extension chord ;)

"Kitplanes" magazine has been doing a series on electric power using a Zero motorcycle drivetrain, and a xenos motor glider, interesting stuff for sure.



https://www.kitplanes.com/turned-on-we- ... ric-xenos/

Cameron,
your analyse is far from irrealistic.
I love the idea of the hybrid motor because it is like a twin engine .. in case the fuel engine stop we would have time to finda proper place to land

Following this thread with a lot of interest.
I usually fly for an hour a d land with half a tank of fuel.
If I could fly for an hour on electric, I would rip and strip that 582 tomorrow!
My gyro is a dirt bike in the sky, not an A to B machine.
Here in Guam there is no "B"...
My biggest issue is maintenance, there is no one on island to fix a 582. I have to learn it myself.
If I could switch to an electric motor? No maintenance? Hells yeah!
Also the cost of fuel and shipping oil?????? Double hell yeah!
As for the hybrid idea I LOVE the saftey idea Giro, but then I'm still stuck with the annual/hourly maintenance regime.
I don't WANT to be an acomplished mechanic, I would rather invest that time in flying.
What about a small replaceable gas engine to battery hybrid that like the Lazair, when you have a problem, you check the engine in the trash and slap on a new one?
A kohler 10 hp? On easy mount brackets with batteries for safety?
Oh sure one of you naysayers will proba ly throw out some law of thermodyna.ics and say its not possible....but the guy with the Lazair that was using multiple chain saw motors was a genius.