The Sonex Aircraft, LLC proof-of-concept electric-powered Waiex aircraft achieved its first flight December 3, 2010 at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, WI. The airplane was piloted by Sonex Founder and E-Flight team leader John Monnett, and was intended to be a conservative non-pattern flight to break ground-effect and analyze in-flight system performance as the next step in testing. This short flight punctuates four years of development by the E-Flight design team in engineering, building and testing one of the most advanced electric flight packages ever conceived, according to Sonex.
“We have a flight envelope expansion plan and will be working on this in the coming weeks and months. We have also already started our motor v4.0 design and motor controller v12.0 to be integrated on N270DC. Many more great things to come on this project!”
The E-flight initiative began about 4 years ago to advance the state of the art in aviation propulsion systems.
