On Tuesday, December 22, 2020 at 1:05:23 AM UTC-5, kinsell wrote:
On 12/21/20 12:14 PM, wrote:
At Toronto Soaring we had an interesting radio call from someone overflying us with a Silent 2 Electro this past summer. He wanted to know if we had a 220V electrical circuit with a plug socket (stove, dryer, etc.) We confirmed we did and invited him to drop in any time. The next day he did just that. He flies with his charging equipment. After landing he pulled the batteries, charged them in our shop where we had the circuit for a welder and was invited to tea in someone’s trailer while they charged. We had a good look at the glider while he was there. I thought the full-span flaperons were a nice feature.

I asked him about take offs and he does taxi on pavement to a runway where he is based but says he can’t do so on grass. On take off we only had short grass but he had trouble getting it to the roll. He had to his belts and rock back and forth in his seat to break free! Watching the climb out I was a little disappointed with the performance. Still, a neat little glider.
On "Scooter's" Silent 2 for sale, the description says it comes with a
2000 watt transformer to deal with the voltage issue. Be nice to hear
why that one's up for sale.
I’m guess the short prop is the real limitation.

That, plus the relatively small amount of energy that is stored in the
batteries. Not exactly a new issue.

-Dave
That was me in GO. Part of the problem getting moving was the smaller than normal tire. I had ordered a replacement tire of the same size indicated on the original but it rubbed on the sides. Apparently, not all aircraft tires of the same specs are actually the same size :( I then got a smaller tire as a temporary replacement while I ordered the identical branded tire from China which I knew would take about 90 days for delivery. The new larger tire works much better even on asphalt taking about 1kw less power to taxi.. It also cost me about 1/3 the price at Aircraft Spruce! As I recall your field was a bit soft and the glider had been sitting for a while waiting for the batteries to charge. I normally get 500fpm climb rate, but as it was later in the afternoon and I couldn't depend on lift, I used a much more economical cruise climb. As it turned out I did find a little bit of lift so arrived home with about 50%.
I spoke with Luka (FES) at Aero Friedrichshafen re a portable charger and he said he had a compact 3kw charger that had been discontinued by the manufacturer but he had modified for the FES batteries. I bought it and it fits nicely behind the seat of my Electro for drop-ins to other fields. It's also much faster than the two 600watt standard chargers. Worst case, if I'm much further away from home I'll get a tow to save about 30-40% from the self launch.