Harbour Air switching to battery powered planes

[DadoBlade]

Our Canadian Dollar is presently worth .75 cents in the U.S.A., The electric motor conversion will take place in the U.SA. Is this an affront to an historical Canadian airframe? A Canadian aviation icon goes to America for a conversion? Whahhh...? Trudeau post-nationalist's would, of course, approve of this. The CEO of Harbour Air should consider converting his piston-powered fleet of DHC-2 Beavers to kerosene powered P&W PT6Ds. A Canadian solution. Employ a few Canadians eh?

[shimmydampner]

I laugh at all the nay sayers... we need to stick to our 100 year old piston engines damit.

You're conflating being a luddite with being a realist. No one is suggesting we shun technological advancement in energy production. However, if you can't see this for the obvious PR move that it is, you're a fool. It will be a long, long time before we have electric powered float planes. I certainly won't see it in the remaining span of my career.

[pilotidentity]

I agree the article reads like an advertisement...

"top seaplane airline"
"I'll be the first guy to fly one"

Entertainment Tonight

[Big Pistons Forever]

Car battery capacity has roughly doubled in the last 4 years. Double it again and the numbers start to work.

I bet the technology to allow a 30 min sightsee or Vancouver to Nanaimo will be fully there in 3 years.

One big issue that has not been mentioned is certification standards. Currently there are no provisions in CAR Part 5 to certify an electric propulsion system in a certified airframe

[PilotDAR]

I imagine they will have that STC "within months"

I consulted for the better part of a year toward a similar project. It can. and will be done, but there are a lot of operational and certification hurtles to overcome. It's more than two years off, and when it arrives, the charging will be the ongoing challenge.

[fish4life]

Better hope you ever get a “Batt hot” light up front.

As for the batteries sustaining themselves long term, I used to be a pretty negative person towards them but some really high mileage Toyota Prius’s have proved me wrong.

[linecrew]

I'm quite curious about how much smaller the noise footprint will be with sound coming from just the prop.

[C-GGGQ]

My guess is not much "less" just different

[fish4life]

I'm quite curious about how much smaller the noise footprint will be with sound coming from just the prop.

judging by how loud drones are I'd say not much less, a 2 blade 185 is one of the loudest airplanes there is on takeoff and its all from the prop.

[C-GGGQ]

Which begs the question: new motor and same prop? Or will they make in upgraded 3 or even 4+ bladed prop for the new motor?

[Its What I do]

can you say R&D money?
It has some merit .
I think you could remove 1200-1400 lbs from a beaver .
Install batteries and engine 2000lbs and fly for 2.5 hours on battery ,. maybe in a few years .
The biggest hurdle will be water based charging systems . Battery /range with reserves.

but what do i know

[goingnowherefast]

I'm sure it will be a different prop, especially on the beaver. It won't have to handle the power pulses from a piston engine and can be made lighter. Probably look more like the prop from the turbo beaver.

[J31]

Which begs the question: new motor and same prop? Or will they make in upgraded 3 or even 4+ bladed prop for the new motor?

You can run a lighter prop because there are almost no power pulses.

[C-GGGQ]

That's what I'm saying. Most of the noise is the prop so how much quieter depends on if they stick to the prop or if they end up with a 5 bladed composite scimitar style with tips etc etc.

[Meatservo]

Almost certainly not the same prop, unless they want to equip their electric powerplant with some kind of auxiliary oil pump to make the pitch-change apparatus and governors work. I wonder how the available torque available from brushless electric motors would dictate any change to the RPM/Pitch relationship between powerplant and prop.

[goingnowherefast]

I wonder if the torque profile of an electric motor would allow the use of a fixed pitch prop? Beavers fly in a narrow speed window, so wouldn't be drastic here. It's not like you need to decrease engine RPM to gain drastic efficiency or decrease engine wear either.

Electric motors are generally pretty high torque, so you'd still get decent take-off power, even at slightly reduced RPM.

[fish4life]

I wonder if the torque profile of an electric motor would allow the use of a fixed pitch prop? Beavers fly in a narrow speed window, so wouldn't be drastic here. It's not like you need to decrease engine RPM to gain drastic efficiency or decrease engine wear either.

Electric motors are generally pretty high torque, so you'd still get decent take-off power, even at slightly reduced RPM.

That may be one of the most intelligent things brought up on this forum, I think you are onto something

[Meatservo]

I was thinking along similar lines, but I wonder too if the best compromise efficiency-wise would result in unacceptably longer takeoff runs, or conversely unacceptable noise in the cruise regime. Regardless of torque profile, a fixed-pitch prop would represent a compromise one way or the other, even on a relatively slow plane. There is a phenomenon in model aviation whereby a fixed-pitch propeller is still being turned by the motor, but at a lower theoretical pitch than the airspeed would call for, resulting in a zone of very disturbed air behind the prop and resulting control problems in the wake of the prop. Not unlike what happens say on a turbo-beaver when the prop is discing and rudder control is lost on the roll-out. The effect is worse on brushless electric motors and fixed-pitch props, due to the fact that a brushless motor will not be spun faster by airflow as long as the electronic speed control is commanding a specific RPM, which is how they work. For this reason alone I can imagine a variable-pitch prop would be safer.

One thing that would definitely reduce complexity is the fact that the electronic speed controls on brushless motors work by responding to an operator demand for a certain RPM: they are "throttled" by tight control over revolutions. Therefore a constant-speed unit or propeller governor would not be necessary, even if variable-pitch was deemed to be an asset.

In terms of available power compared to battery useage, the model-plane community has some fairly well-developed guidelines that allow them to calculate in Watts the power requirements of a given plane, and the voltage, available amp-hours, propeller pitch (the theoretical distance forward travelled in one rotation of the propeller) all play a part. This is of course for fixed-pitch propellers and brushless motors. Brushless motors are actually pretty impressive, having really only one moving part. For aeronautical purposes redundancy in the electronic speed-control would be a very important issue.

The whole thing is actually quite fascinating. The torque band available from the typical brushless electric motor is so broad, they can be used to drive turbine impellers as well as conventional propellers with virtually no modification to the basic motor. I have seen functional brushless electric turbines the size of your thumb.

I feel like any real-world application of this technology will draw heavily on the experiences of the model-aviation hobby, which has become incredibly advanced in the hands of motivated amateurs.

[Beefitarian]

I'd be getting very scared for Albertas long term future.

Calgary can go back to being a stop on the #1 for people driving between Vancouver and the east. Except it will be for folks needing to grab a steak and charge their battery.

Maybe if the population drops off the fishing can go back to normal. I might need to get a horse... Sounds ok.

[jakeandelwood]

https://www.pilotcareercentre.com/Aviat ... red-flight

According to this article Harbour Air is going to have a plane ready for test flying by November, doesn't seem very believable. One thing that is for sure in this article is that Carol James is in fact "stunned" .