Marc Ramsey wrote:
Of course, one will probably be able to get between two and three Apis
Es for the price of one Antares, and the Apis is able to recharge it's
batteries in flight 8^)

Have you got any performance data on that particular feature?
I'd like to see
- the sink rate you have when on windmilling (charging)
- the charge current produced at that point
- how long does it take to actually get some useful energy back into the
batteries? (like, how long for another 500m climb later on?)

Without these data it's hard to say if it's really practical or not. Mind
you, propellers are bad as windmills, the efficiency will be rather low. I
wonder if anyone would actually use this feature at all if they have to fly
around at 2-3 m/s sink rate for hours instead of just soaring.

The Antares has a windmilling sinkrate of 1.25 m/s, with the prop running
freely. So if you start braking the prop it'll be much more. The charging
feature was dropped just because it seemed rather pointless, even though
the hardware itself is quite capable of doing it.

Cheers,
Ola :-)