7/24/2006: First battery-powered manned flight

Not just any batteries, but AA batteries produced by Panasonic, powered this first battery-powered manned flight last week.



According to the full story, 160 "Oxyride" AA batteries (20 serial cells formed one row, eight rows connected parallel: 30V) surged out almost 900W of power.

Enough to get a "Wright Brothers" kind of flight - 59 seconds, 6 meters off the ground, and virtually outrun by the people on the ground. Still, it's something. It's a start.

I figure my frame could get off the ground with roughly twice that number of cells, so, I would like a battery operated plane, please.

Cool. Much more beautiful than the human powered Gossamer Albatross that crossed the English Channel when I was a kid.

The perfect gift for the child of someone you don't particularly like! 160 batteries per minute!

One yard of drag will slow the something something 20%--so says some damn book by Dan Brown (is Dan Brown really a name?) anyway...I'm not impressed.

'Course, I'm just down the road from the Wright Brothers Museum...

I'd like to know how they built that plane.
31m wingspan and it only weighs 44kg....batteries included. Amazing.

**finally**

Something that uses more damn batteries than my digicam...

DISCLAIMER: Warning These 'Wish Book' toys use 160 batteries a minute! Use of product may result in crash....

Just out of curiosity ... what's the cost of batteries, versus, say, the cost of gas to run something like that?

Doesn't look real efficient to me.

AvGas is $4/gallon at the airport where I fly. My 2,500 lb four-seater burns 9 gallons an hour, makes about 120 mph over the ground.

So I guess it has mostly to do with how you define "something like that". Rotax ultralight engine fuel consumption runs from 4 gal/hr (50 hp) to 9 gal/hr (100 hp). The abovementioned four-seater has a 180hp engine.

It said some of the students ran faster than the plane, which flew almost a quarter mile in 59 seconds.
That's almost a 4 minute mile, speed.

I would be much more impressed to hear of the first twisted-rubber-band manned flight.