Ready?
Pipistrel
Aero Electro? Pipistrel Alpha... The team at Eyre To There aviation have asked me to come down here
to Adelaide to test out this the pipistrelle alph what is it...? Pipistrel Alpha Electro. The only,
only certified electric single-engine aircraft flying here in Australia
and they've asked me if i want to fly it today. That it's not centered.
All right we're going to do a quick demonstration now so you can see how loud or not loud this
aircraft actually is i'm about two meters from the front of the aircraft they're gonna start it up
and they promise that they're not gonna run me over when they do that ready
if i was standing here in front of an sr-22 when that was powered up like my aircraft that i fly
i would not be able to be having this conversation with you right now that's crazy what is an
electric plane well it's basically it's an aircraft just like you used to any other aircraft
it's a training aircraft a two-seater really good for student pilots who are learning how to fly but
it doesn't run off carbon-based fuel it runs off electricity now of course there's well where is
the electricity being made and what's being used to make that electricity that's a whole discussion
aside from this but to power this aircraft the only thing it needs to get off the ground
is a charge it's as simple as plugging it into the wall socket and basically just plugging it
so just here on the front here we plug it in so for those of you that sort of familiar with
electric cars a very similar concept roughly how long then would it take to charge up takes
just on an hour and look a lot of factors affect that in terms of temperature and things like that
and obviously state of charge but but generally speaking for about an hour's flying it's about
an hour and 10 hour and 15 minutes worth of charging it has two large batteries in it
um they're an inline battery system as well so effectively speaking you're looking at a
400 volts worth of batteries and if we want to convert that to kilowatts uh the plane's
output is actually about 58 kilowatts in flight so it's a fairly powerful little system all right
all right does those doors closed yeah the little no no the little
silver pin here uh yeah pull that down that disengages it and carry the weight
down
are you all ready to go hey fair i'm good on the right
all happens fairly quickly on the runway acceleration is quite substantial because there's
a lot of torque from the electric motor yep okay so if you've driven an electric car it's like that
it's more or less instantaneous all right not waiting for it to spawn up all set off we got
rpms alive airspeeds are live
safely airborne
That was quick. Now you mentioned when we're coming to the top of the climb that you're going
back to a kilowatt setting i'm obviously used to going back to an rpm setting or a power setting
yep there's obviously a few little things like that but apart from the intricacies of flying an
electric plane it's no different than if it was a gas-powered aircraft that's correct the handling
is told exactly the same as the petrol-powered alpha i haven't flown one but i've flown lots of
other LSA it handles no differently to any other LSA like aircraft it's still basically you've got
climb power you've got cruise power we're setting a power setting rather than a in kilowatts rather
than a horsepower or an rpm so it's affecting a similar sort of prop rpm probably about 30
power that we're cruising at 30 power yeah and we're ticking along at just under 90 knots 90
knots is uh pretty much the crew speed that you'd expect yeah yeah so 90 knots
uh indicated what sort of climb rates could you get from this aircraft as well because it's quite
torque efficient on the ground you were saying it is you know on the take-off then we had
around about 12 to 1300 feet a minute of climb that's a pretty good climb right now it's a nice
cool day so the density altitude's pretty good it helps yeah you want to have a fly
Stefan? yeah that's all right yeah we've got a few minutes we're on track for the damn walk handing
over taking over my aircraft so we've still got 21 22 kilowatts set so 20 to 25 is the cruise
power setting okay but you know we're still at 90 knots so that's plenty we don't need to rush in
um we're at just under 2 000 feet 1800 feet just descended a little to give us a little
bit more vertical separation yeah we still got 66 battery state so we've got plenty of battery
there and we've got uh five miles to run to the dam wall okay so i'm just aiming straight in here
i'm a little bit easy right see there's a sort of bald hill in front of us with trees coming down to
the right yep dDvid this is a big deal for me this is my first time ever flying an electric
aircraft
tip
With people like us who love aviation just to know where it's it's likely to go in the future
you know there'll be more electric power plant development down the line directly it's nice
I want to ask you, and be honest, realistically are we going to start seeing more of these
aircraft in airports in the future because they're very so they're not prototype but they're very
new at the moment is this the way that you think student pilot training is actually going to go?
I certainly do Stefan if i've got anything to do with it we'll see them all over the place
in the coming years but yeah certainly that the business calls for you know thorough research
um and proof of concept really has been done but what we're what we're doing now is really to to
i guess showcase the aircraft and this capability within Australia and hopefully we can then build
you know build our market and see lots more of them around. All righty
all right your aircraft David. Handing over taking over. A
capital city right there and we're stooging along a little electric airplane and most people have
been on the wiser yeah general aviation is so underrated sometimes isn't it they're
privileged to be able to do this it is all right we're starting to set up now for our final leg
power comes back now i'm just about gliding from here we're going to slow down below 70
knots for our first flap extension speed okay let's play seventy flaps to approach
zero nine three two on that split to land two on left land zero nine thirty eight uh it's on
final since i pulled the power our battery state hasn't changed we're not using fuel it's like the
fuel trucks following us no carburetor heat of course to worry about landing checks complete
for the ira lines on western open request pixie electro 09 38 perfect ground. On the taxi back in
we haven't had the opportunity to surprise people by the propeller stopping! Yeah.
So there you go i flew an electric plane now do you think we're going to see these sorts of
electric planes at airports across the world in the future well you may find that a little
bit hard to believe but probably in the same way that you may have found it hard to believe
10 years ago that we'd have electric cars pretty much being mass produced on the roads like we do
now. All I think is that environmental reasons aside even if these aircraft all they do is bring
down the cost of flight training for students in the future gets more people into aviation
and allows more people to achieve their dreams of becoming a pilot and surely that's a good thing
and there's a helicopter starting up behind me of course.