ORIGINAL: dbarrym

Great to read - and IMHO, large EDF's DO belong here in the jet forums (But please leave the toys - GWS, Kyosho, E-flite airliners, etc - in the electric forums. )

Just a general comment on the E-jets from a "typical" jet jockey/consumer... I am very happy to see the growth in performance and availability of quality, large-sized EDF's. While I do fly some E-power (up to and including a 33% YAK in Electric IMAC competition), I still prefer turbines for the sound, smell, and uniqueness factor.

But if my experience is typical - turbines are limited to flying in the late fall, winter, and early spring at my home field, and banned at pretty much every other easily accessible field in my area - EDF's are here to stay. So I'll have at least one or two decent sized EDF's to fly the rest of the year. Now if battery technology can just accelerate a bit more to allow us to 'hot pump' so that we can get more than four, 6 minute flights in a whole flying day (with two sets of $750 batteries)...

Last, with each 8-10 minute turbine flight now costing about $10 in fuel (kero is $7/gallon, oil at $15/quart, I get 5 flights out of my 5 gallon Jersey Modeler)..plus another $3.00 or so in maintenance reserve ($350 average service cost every 125 flights, if you follow JetCat's recommended interval, with 12 minutes on the clock per flight)...totalling $13 per turbine flight...and in my own experience, large LiPo's managed well but flown aggressively will fade (deteriorate) and need replacement after 100 or so flights.... the cost per large EDF flight is actually cheaper than turbines (ignoring fixed and start-up costs) . Might be interesting to do a full cost of ownership/lifetime analysis.

Barry