{"id":66,"date":"2019-08-21T22:12:05","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T22:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/electric.aero\/?p=66"},"modified":"2019-08-21T22:12:05","modified_gmt":"2019-08-21T22:12:05","slug":"cafe-green-flight-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.electric.aero\/?p=66","title":{"rendered":"CAFE Green Flight Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While living in Oregon back in 2009, a coworker told me about the CAFE Green Flight Challenge. This competition pushed the limits of efficiency, requiring participants to fly 200 miles in under 2 hours while consuming less than the equivalent power contained in 1 gallon of gasoline. This sounded exciting! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were both working full time, but we decided to make a team and attempted to enter the competition anyway. I discovered about the competition within a few months of the deadline to enter, and we simply weren\u2019t able to get all of our components or funding in time to qualify–but we tried anyway!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My original design was to use a Stemme S10 motor glider<\/a> frame with a 75 foot wingspan and gut it. I found an advanced ultra-efficient electric motor by a company in Southern California, and they were interested in selling me a custom motor. I toyed with the idea of using a PEM device and a compressed hydrogen tank, but due to the inefficiencies and risks associated with compressed hydrogen, I quickly decided to use an electric battery pack made from a stack of A123’s 20-ah flat panel batteries (lithium nanophosphate).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I contacted Stemme, the airframe manufacturer, but I would not have been able to receive a new glider (shipped from Germany) in time for the competition. I quickly found a used glider for sale in Arizona at $250,000, which would have saved us a significant amount of money. While the motor was not in production yet and only a small prototype had been built, the company committed to building us a motor. e had to get funding ASAP. Unfortunately, all of the companies that I contacted were already supporting existing teams, and we quickly ran out of time while looking for others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coincidentally, the EcoEagle was one of the finalists in the competition, and they used the exact same airframe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Timing is everything!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CAFE Green Flight Challenge<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While living in Oregon back in 2009, a coworker told me about the CAFE Green Flight Challenge. This competition pushed the limits of efficiency, requiring participants to fly 200 miles in under 2 hours while consuming less than the equivalent power contained in 1 gallon of gasoline. This sounded exciting! We were both working full … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “CAFE Green Flight Challenge”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.electric.aero\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.electric.aero\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.electric.aero\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.electric.aero\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.electric.aero\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.electric.aero\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69,"href":"https:\/\/www.electric.aero\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.electric.aero\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.electric.aero\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.electric.aero\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}