10 hours, 500 miles, roughly two tanks of gas, and a quart of oil... a grand total of $150 today for 6 gallons of glow fuel. I was thinking about electric flight the entire time.

My situation:

I'm in college for another year and a half and live nowhere near a decent hobby shop (hence the 4 hour trip). I'm relatively new at flying planes - this is my second summer. I'm currently flying...well it's posted at the bottom... and am ready to move up to a higher quality pattern ship. I'm flying Sportsman, coming in a close second every time this summer. Have a dream of Nats next summer and making that the time to move up to intermediate.

I was starting to look at the YS 1.40's, however I just started having my first troubles with my YS 1.10 and the thought of burning even more than my current 20 gallons/summer is pretty unnerving.

The switch to electric seems obvious, right? Maybe not...

Having a fleet of 3 glow planes and a full bore electric pattern plane sounds cumbersome; my apartment and car are pretty small. Converting my fleet to electric is too expensive to do in a year, and my biggest question/concern: the learning curve.

Is it a bad idea to start with lipo/electric power with twin 5 cell batteries, $200 ESC's, and (roughly) a $1000 airframe? Being in my situation I probably would end up with Zippy battery packs and Turnigy electronics, at least to start.

I love watching the electric pattern ships - they glide by silently and full of grace, then explode tons of energy instantaneously into limitless verticals.

I also love the sound, smell, smoke, feel and throttle response of a YS. The "YS blues" are frustrating, but being a mechanical engineer I am really determined to become a "YS mechanic" although its starting to seem like the way to do that is with a pair of thirsty engines.

Ok pretty much I'm thinking out loud (have 10 hours of electric thoughts and questions piled up in my brain!) and have one last question for now:
Is there a big difference in feel between an electric and a glow pattern plane? I don't have tons of experience but have gotten used to the way my planes feel, especially in relation to the way my engines sound.

Thanks for listening, and for any thoughts!