Light Aircraft Association

Whats happened to electric powered aircraft?
Is anyone building one?
Engineering were going to put the first one through the system free of charge, did it happen?
With elecric cars like the Leaf, and elecric motor bikes coming onto the market it wont be long before there is a plentifull supply of used components at the right price.
The nissan battery pack looks to be sate of the art and big enough (for a start), the motor looks good but may be a little too powerful but the controller may be over complicated .
Does anyone know if it would be possible to mix and match the components, ie Nissan batteries, Brammo Bike motor and Yuneec controller?

Hi Steve, the problem with Engineering approving an electric aircraft without charging is that they wouldn’t know whether the batteries were any good!
Yes, what you say is correct, LAA has undertaken to approve the first submission for an electric aircraft but to my knowledge nobody has taken them up on it yet. A lot of experimentation is going on in France, but there has been very little here by comparison.
There are a good number of books and plenty of DIY material for electric cars and motorbikes, and certainly in the US a number of suppliers of state-of-the art motors and controllers. Chinese Li-pol batteries are now getting affordable as well so hopefully it won’t be too long before we have some UK brains coming up with some electric aircraft solutions.

These people have some interesting stuff:
http://www.electravia.com/

Hello Brian,
No charge fom engineering but no e.m.f. from anyonr else. Looks like the old PFA spirit got left behind somewhere.
Cant you have a word with James Dyson and ask him what he can come up with, not sure what it would look like though so Francis might retract his offer!

Thanks for the info on the French site, Nick. This looks more like PFA(make it) stuff! (rather than LAA- buy it) No prices yet though.

I understand that electric flight has taken place in the UK. I think Flylight have flown SSDR microlights (no LAA or BMAA Engineering input needed), I believe they have flown both 3 axis and flexwing types. I can't find mention on their website so I might have dreamt it.

Rans6....