There was electricity in the air at this year's EAA Airventure air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Literally. A serious new trend at this year's show was the sudden proliferation of electrically powered airplanes. A German company called Lange Flugzeugbau showed off its gracile motor glider, the Antares 20E, which it claims can climb 10,000 feet on a single charge of its lithium ion batteries. Once at a suitable altitude, the retractable propeller stows away, and the pilot then needs to find air currents to stay aloft.
By contrast, the Shanghai-built Yuneec (pronounced "unique") e430 is a more conventional two-seat light sport aircraft. It's equipped with battery packs that can keep it in the air for the better part of 90 minutes, and is designed only to fly around for as long as the juice lasts. So you won't have enough time in the air to get very far? Big deal, says managing director Clive Coote: "The idea is just to go up and have fun." It's easy to understand Coote's enthusiasm for electric power: Last year aviation gasoline hit a punishing $5 a gallon. And with global warming on everyone's mind, electricity-powered flying is definitely appealing. But how thrilling can electric flying be? Batteries are always going to hold less energy than an equivalent weight of gas, so electric planes are either going to be comparatively underpowered, short-legged, or both.
The special appeal of Oshkosh–which started out as a confab for home-builders–has been to see what astonishing new creations America's legion of amateur aeronautical innovators had come up with. By that score, this year's air show was disappointing. The most fun–and surprising–new aircraft we came across was the Snedden M7, designed by Ohio pilot and plane-builder Andrew Snedden. It features bright red fabric covering a truss of aluminum tubing, with splays of wire bracing to keep everything in place. The unusual four-wheeled undercarriage looks better suited to a shopping cart. To get into the open cockpit, you have to crouch, crawl under the wing, and climb up into it from below. The most novel feature is its one-on-a-kind inverted V-tail that serves as both an elevator and a rudder via a mechanism that we don't quite understand. With a cruising speed of about 35 mph, the aircraft isn't going to get anywhere fast, but that's okay: "Low and slow is the best way to see things," Snedden says. He has yet to decide if he's going to put it on the market as a kit plane. Either way, he gets top marks for creativity.
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