Dear ePlane followers,
On behalf of the ePlane team over here at Harbour Air, we wanted to thank you again for joining us on our quest to get the first fully electric plane certified for commercial use in Canada. As we hadn’t reached out to you all since our announcement regarding our partnership with H55 back in April, we thought it was time to give a bit of an update about what we’ve been doing.
Testing..Testing… Testing…
We are closing in on 30 test flights performed, continuing to evaluate take-off, climb, cruise, range and endurance performance. Although Greg is still our main test pilot, we have also welcomed Eric Barry, another Harbour Air flight crew member to the test team. Greg and Eric split performing these flights at various power settings to simulate different magniX motors in order to accurately size the motor for the certification design. Regrettably, we have had a small setback in our flight testing – our charging station is undergoing repairs/maintenance and thus we are delayed. As the charging process is unique to this project because in addition to the charging station it requires a separate external component with tailored software to communicate with the plane, this isn’t a simple repair or replacement but we do hope to have it back up and running by mid-September.
Transport Canada continues to be great partners on the project with us and we have submitted some of the project’s preliminary documentation. For all you industry buffs out there, this includes our plan to use the new amendment 64 to CAR 523 when it is adopted later this year. For all none industry buffs, this simply means that we are working on agreement with Transport Canada as to the best path to obtain certification of the electric conversion.
Along with our partners at magniX and H55, we have completed our Preliminary Design Review (PDR) on the design iteration for certification. As previously mentioned, after flights at various power settings we have decided to move forward with the magni350 EPU for our certification version of the aircraft. We are also reviewing the propeller design to determine if any further efficiencies or performance improvements can be made although we are extremely satisfied with the current performance.
Formula E Championship
As some of you may have heard, Vancouver has won the bid to host the Formula E championship event on July 2nd, 2022 ABB Formula E Vancouver and we couldn’t be more excited! We hope to have the ePlane ready to be showcased to the world and will continue to keep you all updated on what that will mean for our loyal ePlane followers. More details coming soon….
We are always here to answer any further questions that you have and will work hard to be better at sending more regular updates. If interested, please find links to recent media coverage here:
All Electric And All At Sea
Electrifying Caravans and Beavers
Beaver vs Goliath
Again, thank you all for your interest, support and most importantly, enthusiasm in our project.
Greg and Harbour Air’s ePlane Team
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