RE: 20th Annual Pocono Pattern Contest June 26th and 27th
Finally got a chance to fly Dave Lockhart's electric Bravo. Thanks Dave!! It was quite interesting and enlightening.
Dave says that the powerplant delivers around 3500 watts and I believe it. That's terrific power to weight for the plane, better than anything else in pattern land I think. That's pretty darn close to 5 hp, roughly equivalent to 45cc gassers on pipe but with much better midrange grunt.
It was dead calm last night so I flew the plane at half throttle pretty much throughout, excepting for a couple vertical up line snaps.
But I think the thing that was even more impressive about the set-up, at least as much as can be gleaned from 5 minutes of flying a totally foreign set-up in dead calm conditions, was the downline brakes. I thought that my SAP 30cc powered Temptress improved greatly in her downlines from the Webra days, but Dave's electric brakes were much better.
That much power could be gotten used to quickly. I am not prepared to go through the expense of converting to electric but it has got my attention for certain.