Dear E-Fan!
During Summer the Bees humble in the gras. You are nearly as quiet and do not make hot air. That’s really cool! What are you currently doing, during winter, when the days are short and metereological conditions are not very promising for flying? Most probably you rest in a well heated hangar and charge your accumulators for the coming summer. How does it feel like to be a tiny sparrow next to your giant brother, the A380, who can fly across oceans? Your range is much smaller: after approx. one hour flying, the accumulators are empty and you have to go back to the charging station. But that’s OK, because an average engine powered flight in general aviation does not last much longer. And what do you do in case of loss of power in the air? In that case, you have an emergency accumulator. And if that fails, air is still flowing around your wings and you descent like a glider. With 600 kg you are relatively heavy and with the comparably short wings faster on the ground.
As I can see from the following video, you had the great debut 2014 during LeBourget airshow. Interesting detail: you taxi to the runway by an electrically driven main wheel and use the fans only for flying.
And how do you continue? You will get a larger sister: the E-Fan 2.0. The two pilots will sit side-by-side during training. Later you will also have a four-seater as a brother. He is named E-Fan 4.0 and will also have hybrid-power to allow flights with a duration of up to 3.5 hours.
By the way, I also fly environmentally friendly: with a turbo-diesel made by Thielert Aeroengines. And my pilot is very relaxed, because the engine is controlled fully automatically by a FADEC. However, about that I might tell you later in another post.
Many happy landings!
Your engine powered flyer: Karsten Reichart (pilot and engineer)
