THE ELECTRIC PARAMOTOR PAGE

DIY and Offshelf

Some niceties to electric flight are:

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• More quiet.

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• Simpler mechanical systems.

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• Can be lighter weight and more reliable.

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• Instant starting.

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• Torque and power curve are wider, though, like with engines, there are optimum RPM bands.

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• No mucking around with fuel (unless a hybrid).

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• No emissions.

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• Lower cost hardware -- often drone gear.

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• Lower cost maintenance.

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• Time Between Overhaul (TBO) is much longer (in theory, and in observation among the UAS world).

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• Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and High Altitude overlaps.  Electric systems need no air for combustion, so can take PPG flight well above 100,000 feet MSL and for NASA missions off-Earth (especially due to the portability of paragliders).

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• Puts you into the future of PPG and the cutting edge flight research.  In e-PPG, we fly like the Wright brothers all over again.

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Cons:

(Keep in mind these are as of 1/19/18, improving yearly, and also applies to only civilian-grade hardware).

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• Gear-heads and oil industry will pooh pooh you as a greenie, commie, eco, Prius sissy!  But, Stan is actually very conservative, a lifelong  gear-head/ aircraft mechanic and loves electric motors, too. Fear not a greenie agenda here. Stan normally clubs baby seals for fun, craps in your drinking water, pollutes the atmosphere, burns holes in the ozone in delight, and tells academics yapping on "Sustainability" mantras to go stuff it....but electric aircraft and cars are not at all wussy!  Doing things cleaner and greener?  When we aren't clubbing baby seals, eradicating human life by air, serving the war machine, or littering willy nilly....why not burn less fuel, make less noise, and pollute the world less?  Some of the greatest aerospace vehicles in history are and will continue to be electric.  How about nuclear submarines?  Are those eco sissy?  Electric drive there.  How about making a future Starship Enterprise?  You gonna do that with air-breathing engines or chemical rockets?  Don't lecture a piston and jet mechanic on how horrible be electric and hybrid vehicles! They are improving yearly, and they are the future.

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• Thrust to weight ratio on lower cost, civil hardware....still stinks.  Rate of Climb usually stinks unless compromising on flight duration.

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• Battery, generator, fuel cell capacity, and rapid recharging on lower cost civilian hardware...still stinks.  Near-term, we can expect around 4X improvement on batteries.  Fuel cells and generators are also improving. 

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• Flight duration and practical range (due to slow recharging and no refueling) generally stinks.

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• Don't think you're some pioneer inventor of the wheel.  Electrical science & engineering has taken a wrong fork in the road -- and also suffered intentional misguidance, persecution, and suppression -- since the hayday when giants like Ben Franklin, James Clerk Maxwell, and Tesla walked the Earth.  Every scientist & engineer these days is brought up on the "Maxwell's Equations", which are really just devious Heaviside-Hertz revisions of his greatest work.  And, the best work of Nikola Tesla was also squashed.  The dawn of the nuclear age, advance of physics, and deeper electrical & magnetic understanding also required it. As such, for all the world's achievements in electrodynamics in the last century....it really doesn't move at a Moore's Law pace anymore other than in electronics & computing.  The new technology you will see next year is really what could have been 50 years ago.  It goes the same for piston engines and internal combustion.  All is just fancy and really nice engineering dressing atop a caveman core cake.

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• Similar to the tiny piston engines used for flight, most are experimenting with adapted Remote Control and hobby electrical hardware. These are fine for drones but severely lacking on the construction & safety standards of manned aviation.  Just like PPG does with combustion engines, we are pushing these tiny electrical motors and systems to their mechanical limits in maximizing thrust and gutting weight.

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• Everything pioneering is also experimental and without the decades of flight proving and data to piston engines.

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• Electric systems are no more reliable than mechanical, and it depends upon how engineered and used. You can just as easily burn up the windings on a costly electric motor or trash your batteries among overstrain same as you can destroy a Vittorazi engine in PPG.

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• While electric technology is improving yearly -- largely driven by the UAV industry -- "The Man" really still wants you pimped out as an oil junkie.  He could have allowed you 200 to 1000 MPG cars, cars running off water, electric cars needing no recharge or batteries, and much more decades ago and to this day, but they do actually assassinate and squash nerds who give those things to the public, and Stan is not your save-the-world eco Prometheus! 

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• (Side note:  Stan once knew the tech broker who introduced the first cordless phones.  Some HAM radio guys developed large handheld units and they became very popular among ranchers in the late 1970's.  After making a couple hundred thousand dollars, Ma Bell slapped them with a lawsuit alleging only Ma Bell hardware could plug into their lines or it causes damages.  All business was frozen.  He protested to the FCC.  There, he met a at gangster-like director in Washington who took him to lunch.  Like Tony Saprano, he says to the man: "Look, I can get the lawsuit dropped and they'll even give you $75k....but you have to leave the business for ten years."  With all else lost, he took the money resentfully. And, within a decade, everyone had cordless phones!   Why did Ma Bell fight it?   Back then, they charged extra per month for every phone jack in the home + leased those big, heavy, corded phones to you. They had just started to give you push button phones and here come a bunch of little scumbags intruding upon their gigantic commerce. It was only a matter of time before the evolution, but they needed to bully and keep control of it as long as possible. Every year slowed down was many more millions in their pocket. That's how it works.  They don't have to kill you.   The means of commercial extortion are many, and that is also what treasonously kills American innovation because foreign nations often have no such pimps governing their streets.)

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• Reality is:   Combustion engines will be around for decades more.  Electric flight will grow more.  Your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will still be burning oil.  "The Man" will let you have costly hybrid cars of increasing performance.  He'll let you have increasing MPG -- eventually over 100 MPG.  Maybe even 200 MPG.  His politicians will always take up the greenie eco banner, but mostly for  tyranny's sake and business racketeering, not to actually save the world.  They're a bunch of hypocritices. You aren't meant to be saved.  You're meant to be over-medicated, over-taxed, over-controlled, enslaved, over-vaccinated, denied of vitamins, denied of clean air / food/ water, denied of medical cures, and dumbed down into oblivion as a herded cow; To eek out your days as a slave chewing the cud in your feed lot until around Social Security age when the system prefers that you just die off before collecting. 

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But!!! Building electric aircraft and your own electric cars -- to hot rod levels -- that is how you break your slave chains.  That is your Spartacus act of defiance!  That is the Great Rebellion.  Your escape from The Matrix.

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Industry will not give the best stuff to you.  Venture capital will not.  The military world will not. The academic world will not (They make their money on the perpetual do-nothing research racket). Now and then, the mediocre nerds crank out white papers, take grants, and do busy work -- usually dragging a six month research affair into six years of milking the cash cow.

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You will see ongoing advances in electric flight and vehicles yearly, but the true story on electric's capacities are like the greatest prize fighter ever simply not allowed to win.  Like mobsters running the gambling around a boxing ring, "The Man" forces us all to take a dive.  History is filled with noble dead men, squashed businesses, and bought up starving businesses which once tried to cut your energy slaves chains....just like the beheaded Roman inventor of flexible glass.

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Now, you uppity slaves, listen up!  Be not too disheartened. "The Man" does allow you to do such things a little bit at a time.  He's okay with you going off-grid so long as you are buying fuel or paying into his racket steadily in some form.  He's okay with you flying electric PPG, ultralights and other aircraft....but not too high, too fast, nor for too long, nor too cheaply.

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What is truly possible with unmanned electric flight?   Global range with no need to land other than for repairs and maintenance -- just like with nuclear naval vessels.

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What do you really need as a PPG pilot?  

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• Just more reliable combustion engines. See the Engine Diagnostics Page.

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• Electric systems that are combustion competitive on cost, flight duration, and even more reliable.  You really only need flight for 2 to 6 hours, not HALE UAS capacity.  Two to 6 hours PPG e-flight is something Stan is working on for you, but not for you DIY cheapies.....just for a deal with a suitably large PPG firm that will sell it to you (Stan doesn't care to run a startup factory.  His factory associates can, but somebody has to run the business all the same).

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This page is also a tickler to stimulate your imagination on the future of e-flight.  It is a place to show you some of the great work done by others before Stan's PPG work enters the field.

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These videos include the work of some e-PPG pioneers who presently fly for only minutes, and usually with less performance than combustion.  But, they are all defiant Spartacus nerds making war upon "The Man"!  And, much better is possible near-term.  Much better to electric systems has been possible for decades, but just neglected.

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All the innovation you see here to these great inventor-aeronauts...they aren't even working with the best technology and know-how available, but look at what they have achieved so far.

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This is the beauty of PPG:  Everyone's making just another airplane or copter these days with some great improvements, but paragliding, PPG, and PPC are still just a couple decade babies in aviation.  All the cowboys, freedom, and Wright Brothers kind of innovation exists right here in the FAR 103 Ultralight category.  We are witnessing the birth of affordable personal aviation.  Your own sky motorcycle and future commute aircraft once FAA NextGen and ADS-B evolves. Exciting times to be an aeronaut!

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As for barriers posed by the oil racket?   Consider these truths:

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1) Oil is not at all in short or dwindling supply.  Some nations -- such as Saudi Arabia -- are burning through their oil exports by 2030 because their domestic demand has not yet shifted to alternatives beyond oil burning.  They are, however, putting several trillion dollars into global investment in alternative energy technologies. Concurrently, also moving to control more oil reserves and pipelines, but even the oil rich Mid East is tired of oil.

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2) Contrary to propaganda, oil is not a "fossil fuel".  Belief that it is a dwindling supply of dinosaur & plant goo  -- coupled with eco pressure -- is meant to keep you paying more at the pumps.  And, they will continue to price gouge you as much as the market will bear.

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3) Global Warming?  Global Cooling?  Climate Change?  Where you really have no clue, heck just call it Climate Change!  Invoke mantras like "Sustainability".  Stan is very hostile to such talk, as propaganda makes him mad, but don't prejudice your detest for such things also against electric and hybrid-electric.  Don't throw out the good technology baby and better environmental practice with stale eco propaganda bathwater.  Politically Left or Right, we all breathe the same air!

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4) The world is a very different place from 20 to 50 years ago. As technology advances, the attitudes and prejudice of people change.  PPGs are one of the simplest vehicles.  In the near-term, their performance and overall benefits will outweigh anything of gas.  The more ePPGs fly, the more people realize the value of electric.

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