Best option for electric self starting glider
GP are getting their act together and increasing their manufacturing footprint.
We should finally see GP's coming out of the factory door.
Even if there is a little bit more complexity with a pylon mounted motor, there are clear advantages over the FES solution.
- more powerful motor
- better cooling
- better prop efficiency
- no prop strike risk
Another advantage of GP with large batteries is that, beside the larger energy capacity, the cells are discharged at lower amps rating and therefore run cooler.
The climb performance seems to be in line with flight test results.
As discussed before the published climb perf are without WB. Therefore TOM 320-330 kg. Even when flying empty, the typical WL will be ~42 kg/m2 which is already nice.
GP has made some good choices:
- light weight to allow very good electric climb performance (climb rate and altitude gain)
- high aspect ratio/low wing surface to achieve high L/D and higher WL. Maybe Max L/D will be a little bit less than 18m like ASH26 or DG800, but the L/D above 150 km/h should be better.
BTW, you need to add fixed ballast to get to 525 kg MTOM.
Regards,
JL
|