Links
Suppliers' sites
- Emax - full details of motors and ESCs
- MPJet motors - fortunately their products are a lot better than their web site
- Jamara - brushed motors
- GibbsGuides.com - the guides are available direct from Andrew Gibbs' site. (Listed in this category because Andrew has kindly provided a number of the photos on the Fanfare site).
National associations
- BEFA - British Electric Flight Association, in its time the main specialist body for electric flight. (now regrettably dissolved).
- BMFA - British Model Flying Association, main national body for all aero-modelling
- BARCS - British Association of Radio-Controlled soarers, mainly pure gliders but also covers electric gliding competitions
- NIMSA - Northern Ireland soaring Association (includes some electric coverage)
- AEFA - Australian Electric Flight Association
- AMA - US Academy of Model Aeronautics (not a lot on the site); NEAC electric flight special interest group - or at least their web site - seems defunct?
- MFNZ - Model Flying New Zealand; (not much) electric in their soaring section
- FAI - see espeically CIAM - FAI's 'international modelling commission' and CIAM links to all national bodies.
Forums
- RCMF - Radio Controlled Model Flying huge general RC flying forum which includes a lot of electric flight coverage
- Model Flying (RCME) - growing forum from the RCME magazine again with a lot of electric flight coverage
- Flying Sites forum - on the Flying Sites R/c aero portal (which includes an excellent set of commercial site links).
- eSoaring.net - forum dedicated to the new 2009 height limited competition class and the 200W/Kg 'Bartlett's Farm' class - but lots on electric gliders in general.
- Fly Quiet - mainly for pure gliders but includes a big electric gliding section
- RC Talk UK - electric section of a large UK forum
- High Alpha - electric area of a small but interesting new English forum
- RCGroups - giant US forum with a lot of electric flight coverage. Includes the E Zone online magazine. And a nice canard thread.
- RC universe: Electric aircraft universe - another big US forum
- Wattflyer - big US-based e-flight forum.
- Electric F3A forum
- FlyingGiants electric - another US forum with e-flight coverage.
- RC Canada - electric flight forum
- Ireland Model Forum - small electric section in a mostly-slope forum
- Modelisme.com - French electric flight forum (unsurprisingly in French)
- RCPak forum - electric board of a newish forum based in Pakistan.
- Ornithopter forum - includes some splendidly esoteric discussion, including hovering ornithopters (and see also commercial nano-development.)
- DIY drones forum - some fascinating UAV discussion.
- Home builders' forum - new Oshkosh 365 forum includes discussion of electric full-size
Blogs etc.
- Radio Control Electric Soaring - Martin Bell's e-soaring site
- Palo Lishak's electric glider site - lots of interesting international input on height-limited competition developments from Slovakia
- Stefan's Electric R/C Web Site - Stefan Vorkoetter. Small but techie site - mainly old technologies but still interesting.
- EFlight Wiki - great idea though growth since 2009 has been steady rather than spectacular.
- Solar powered UAV project - forum thread on a 2006 MIT student project supervised by Mark Drela
- Electric RC Airplane - a bit rudimentary.
- 30000' RC Plane Challenge - great idea. Did it - er - get off the ground?
- B.E.R.G. blog - gliders and electric gliders in South Africa; including a SA electric glider x-country distance record.
- 'Electric Glider' blog - takes all sorts to make a web.
- 'RC Links' - Jay Kory's new but expanding site.
- Icarus project - not quite e-flight - but same spirit ... and what an achievement.
Magazines
- QEFI - web site for the print magazine QEFI
- AMI - Aviation Modeller International (includes Aero Modeller)
- RCMW - web site for Radio Control Model World
- RCME - web site including forum and a lot of electric coverage for the print magazine RCME
- Model Airplane News - with opportunity to sign up for a free e-newsletter
- E Zone - huge US online electric flight magazine
- Ampeer online - interesting US club mag.
- Modelflight - splendid online general aeromodelling magazine from Reg Heath
- CIAM Flyer - some electric coverage in this publication from the CIAM.
Other good stuff
- James Ballard's AmpedRC tutorial videos - great 'how to' clips demonstrating on a Yak. Beginners stuff through to advanced 3D manoeuvres.
- Inter-Ex - truly inspirational site about the annual Inter-Ex experimental model aircraft meet (2010 is in Geneva). 2008 and 2009 images added 31 Jan 2010. See also Stephan Brem's site. (A splendid link from Inter-Ex shows a VTOL EDF taileron model.)
- History of model electric flight - Dave Day's history starts with a model from 1909.
Further illustrations of equipment he mentions: Mabuchi A1; Mattel Superstar - History of model electric flight in Australia - from Peter Pine.
- Pioneers of electric flight - video including Col Taplin flying (and crashing?) an electric Radio Queen in 1957. And later pioneer Keith Shaw - video of his Bugatti Racer.
- High Voltage! - Craig Kulesa's electric flight site was last modified 1998. A nice reminder of how things have changed in a decade.
- Monster Models David Theunissen's list of huge electric models (and his site has other material on electric flight)
- OVIRC - Unusual RC Flying Objects. Site in French. Includes ornithopters, pterosaurs etc.
- Ornithopter zone - really nice site on ... er ... ornithopters. Includes a potted history of r/c ornithopters, electric and IC.
- Drivecalc - free and effective electric flight calculator
- Competition classes - scare yourself with the FAI pylon (F5D )and multi-task electric glider (F5B) classes (these are the British team sites, or see a F5D video on a German forum; or plenty on F5D and F5B on YouTube.
The increasingly popular height limited class (and variants) is far closer to sports modelling.
In FAI aerobatics, Electrics compete successfully with IC. See Dez Vaghy's pages (Canadian national team member); the Electric F3A site; the great Wolfgang and Roland Matt's (less great) site -
Full size electric flight is a growth area
(see also UAV / MAV - the boundaries are fuzzy):
Yuneec 430 launched June 2009 claims - perhaps contentiously - to be the first commercially electric produced full-size(and yes it is the same firm as the Robocopter). Yuneec video.
Electric paramotor was developed by Yuneec with Parajet - and used in the 2009 charitable (and ambitiously-named) 'Solar Electric Flight Expedition.'
Electra claims to be the first electric powered light aircraft
Kelvin on the BVS site claims a British electric microlight flew in 1996.
Skyspark - world speed record for electric full size June 2009.
Sonex two-seater explanatory video
Pipistrel Virus won the NASA General Aviation Technology Challenge 2008. (Two passengers and 50mpg!) See also their Taurus electric glider [& images / video].
Boeing fuel cell / electric hyrbrid aircraft video
Solar Impulse - Bertrand Piccard's project to fly around the world using solar power in 2011 - Simulator video. 8 July 2010 the plane completed the first solar-powered 24 hr flight: full news video from france24english; Independent report (includes short video).
Solar Flight - Sunseeker II and other projects - wth recent updates 2010. And its first international flight.
Sky-sailor project - including a 27 hour solar flight.
Solar electric paramotor flights for charity
Battery Vehicle Society site includes a number of electric aircraft.
History of electric flight is covered in Kitplanes Magazine. See also references to what seems to be the first full-size electric plane (built by Fred Militky) in Dave Day's model history above; and André Noth's Sky-Sailor site with a splendid history of solar-electric flight (and see also Noth's Design of Solar Powered Airplanes for Continuous Flight).
Antares 20E and Silent 2 are commercially available electric powered gliders. More on Dave Nadler's site (US agent for Antares)..
ElectraFlight - has commercial electric microlights, including now the cute and model-like ElectraFlyer-C. (More, and several videos and photos, on the -C))
CAFE foundation (Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency includes a lot of electric flight material. See also CAFE's April 2009 symposium on electric flight. (And 2008 symposium, interestingly reviewed by Peter Garrison in Flying.)
Clean Sky is a European Commission joint technology initiative 2008-2013 with a budget of €1.6 billion; but no stress on electric flight.
Home-builders' forum - new Oshkosh 365 forum includes discussion of electric full-size
Jukka Tervamäki has an electric autogyro (though as yet only a virtual one. Autogyros site is dedicated to r/c model autogyros but mostly IC.)
US Centennial of Flight Commission has information on electric airships in the 1880s.
Full-size glider electric winch? - intriguing (if unpromising) discussion
NASA In-Space Propulsion Technology Program - scale possibilities for the more ambitious electric modeller? Or try nano-technology propulsion.
Wikipedia entry on electric and solar aircraft is a useful one.
Electric Cri-Cri - video of world's smallest electric full-size (with four motors). And now even smaller? - 2 electric motors. - Electric UAV (unmanned air vehicles)
Helios Prototype - NASA's solar-powered flying wing is extraordinary (but the more model-like Qinetiq Zephyr holds duration record as of July 2008.)
Modular UAV developed in South Africa (size kept down to model classification)
Draganfly (sic) multi-rotor helis and tandem wing
MHL Flying Fish 'autonomous buoy'
HADA - Spanish hybrid fixed wing/heli
Aerocopter - 'counter-rotating mono tilt rotor'
HeliPlat - not a heli at all; Italian solar powered converted 7m scale model glider
MW microdrone
'DIY Drones' student project Purdue University (Indiana). Now (April 09) includes a Ning social networking site. See also ArduPilot and AttoPilot systems (and some discussion of their different operations and markets). (See also the Drela-supervised MIT student UAV project.)
Zechlaser drone - edf fliers may pick up some ideas from the pneumatic catapult launch system?
UAVSA - UK drone UAV association site - Micro Air Vehicles -
FPV has made it into the model mags recently ('First person view' -
on-board video transmitted to virtual-reality goggles for an r/c pilot
to fly the plane or heli.) MAVs takes this a stage further, bringing
robotics to the electric heli: the video signal is used for computers
to fly the vehicle. See Pixhawk Zurich student project and 2009 Florida-based conference and competition. A half-way house: GPS FPV recovery.
- Not exclusively electric, but useful - world listing of frequencies available for aeromodelling.
- Not at all electric, but just great - inspiration for your next model from the between-the-wars aeroplane inventions detailed at **Rex Research**.
And in similarly experimental vein ...
- the Spratt Controlwing and related videos;
- video of a dufferent form of silent flight, the Besler steam plane;
- more on Kirsten's cycloidal flying machine
- Stipa-Caproni flying barrel (from the splendid **Bomberguy** - YouTube aviation history channel)
**Zeno's Warbird Video Drive-in** - WWII pilot training videos and documentaries; and see also Living Wardbirds.
HowFliesTheAlbatross.com - intriguing pieces from an ex-Northrop engineer.