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richard.cs:
After a bit of hunting around online it looks like non-paramotor, <70kg designs are quite possible after all. The Whing Ding II is 55 kg and that's with 1970s materials.

Some photos: https://mayaultralight.com/portfolio/11-wdii-build/

Plans were freely available on yahoo groups before it died, but not captured by the wayback machine as they were in a members area. Found them for a few dollars anyway so whatever. There's also the bloop which comes in at 81 kg. http://m-sandlin.info/bloop/bloop.htm.

Sorry, I seem to have hijacked your thread a little...
ITman496:
Yeah, thats fair.  I know a lot of ultralights operate slightly "fat" in that nobody really cares if its 5-10lbs over the limit. Especially because simply having dew on the wings from sitting outside can push you over the limit.  That's why they stopped weighing them at the oshkosh meetup (so I heard) because depending on the humidity, you might violate the weight restriction.  Not cool!

But 70kg.. that's like..  a whole 100lbs less then my plane.  I don't know how I'd lose that much weight off of it!  Unless you become jet man and become part of the structure of the airplane.  Do carbon fiber pants count as part of the aircraft if they form the tail boom?   ;D

Oh I don't mind! I'm happy to talk airplanes at all.  Besides, the thread is pretty much concluded anyway.  I may make an actual project thread for it eventually if anyone cared about it! I know the plane as a whole isn't strictly.. electronic.

I like those two designs! They are extremely creative.  Its amazing how light you can make a flying machine that can carry a person. It truly is.
NiHaoMike:
I wonder how feasible it would be to couple a BLDC motor/generator to the engine and connect it to a smart inverter in order to make it a hybrid. Would the weight savings from downsizing the engine be enough to offset the added weight of the electric drive system? (What's the ratio of cruising power to takeoff power?)
ITman496:
I've pondered about that but batteries sure do weigh a lot compared to gasoline.  And the less powerful aircraft engines don't seem to weigh much less than the more powerful ones, at least at this size range, not on a linear scale..
NiHaoMike:
The batteries would only need to supply a substantial amount of power during the seconds it takes for the plane to takeoff and climb. At least in the R/C world, even miniature jet engines have been mostly rendered obsolete by BLDC motors.

What batteries are not good for is range, hence why the hybrid arrangement.
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