It's a great sight and a great achievement. Practically though these
engines have a huge problem of poor fuel consumption. The consumption is
about 95lts/hour. A petrol self launcher will use 16lts/hr and will have a
21lt tank. To give the same duration the jet will need a very large and
heavy-when-full 120lt tank.

"Mhudson126" wrote in message
...
All,
Please refer to the following link to see a video of the Silent
moter-glider
with jet engine's attached. It is absolutely amazing watching a sailplane
doing a low pass with jet engines screaming, AND self-launching.
http://www.alisport.com/pag_ing/news.htm

Yes, the Jet's on the Silent ARE retractable.

For those of you who saw the pictures of the Ventus 2 moter-glider with
Jet
engines attached, there is no way that thing self-launched. It does not
count
unless it can self-launch! Here are the general numbers for those of you
who
would like to do the math. The engines produce 34 pounds of thrust each,
and
with a flying weight of about 1000 pounds, initial takeoff acceleration
would
be a blistering 0.06 G's (About 1 knot a second). You would need a REALLY
long
runway (See Edwards AFB) at sea level in order to get the thing in the
air, IF
they could even produce enough thrust to beat the breaking point to start
the
roll (Doubtful).
-Mitch
Hudson