Скачать или смотреть The Ambitious HPA Electo: A Dream Aircraft Fail

The HPA Electo was an ambitious project The goal was to develop a low-cost executive aircraft and eventually establish a network of air taxis It kind of looked like a Cessna Mustang with props on pylons that stuck out the sides The Electo was powered by 2 Thilert V-VIII diesels with three hundred horsepower each that were buried in the back of the fuselage The Electo projected performance numbers were pretty impressive A two hundred knot cruise speed a range of one thousand seven hundred nautical miles and fuel burn of 50 gallons per hour The projected price tag was very attractive at only five hundred thousand dollars Unfortunately the Electo was far from achieving any type of performance numbers at all It first flew in 2005 was found to be highly unstable and downright dangerous The test flight was terminated after a brief 7 minutes and it never flew again The company scrambled to address stability issues and redesigned the Electo with a more conventional layout moving the twin engines on the wings But by this point investors had bailed and the new Electo never left the drawing board The company declared bankruptcy in 2006 The sole prototype was purchased by the Otto Lilienthal Museum and is on permanent display outdoors at Anklum Airport in northeastern Germany