BG wrote on 10/12/2020 10:47 AM:
On Sunday, October 11, 2020 at 6:57:23 PM UTC-7, Ramy wrote:
Charging from the fuselage will make it impossible to charge overnight under most circumstances unless you tie down near a hangar or use your own generator. Perhaps using a generator is a reasonable practical method?
Ramy
I heard it takes roughly 10 gallons of fuel to recharge an empty Antares with a Honda generator. This ran all night long with a mid night refueling. They encourage every one in RV park to not run their generator and night because of the noise. If I was camping at an airfield and had to listen to a generator, I would be pretty unhappy especially if the owner was sleeping in another location.
Anybody thinking of owning an electric glider should understand the challenges. Those with removable battery packs are on the right path for general use.. Those with built in batteries are not seeing the big picture clearly..
Already there are several models of electric gliders with batteries in the wings, with more
coming in the future, because that allows the fuselage to hold a more powerful motor with a
larger propeller. The good news is they do not need to cause you to lose any sleep, because
they can be recharged without running a noisy generator all night, for several reasons:
- very quiet portable generators are readily available now
- the charging can be done for about 4 hours after landing, and 4 hours in the morning, giving
you a 10 pm - 7 am quiet time. That 8 hours of charging at 1.5kw, is 12 kWh, more than enough
to charge the GP15 I've ordered (8.2kWh battery), the AS34 (8.6kWh), and even the Antares (~10kWh)
- And especially because they will typically return with over half their capacity unused,
reducing the charge time to less than 4 hours.
And, if all else fails: earplugs, a white noise generator, maybe even a motel :^(
--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1