Very nicely stated Adam I agree having the electric motor setup as a quick flight or going up and experiencing a smooth and much quieter flight would be a treat. Fingers crossed for good weather and definitely waiting to hear about your first flight.
great video adam, your a natural in front of the camera, good info in the sp140, also, on a sad note, feel my pain, here in the UK we pay $9 a uk gallon ( 5ltrs )
I appreciate that bud, thank you. Yikes, that is some spendy fuel. You really have to commit to a flight! The electric would be a nice balance for you to offset some of those costs.
super Comparison and explanations Adams , love your video ! I‘m still waiting a bit to get into the electric, but at leased i still went for the electric car like you o.) …..stay save and i‘m looking much forward on your first test flights Rg Bernd
You are the first person to say the SP140 is not for newbies to the sport, and I think you are right. You make solid points why the SP140 frame is not newbie proof. Thank you very much for stating why it's not a good choice for the newbie. I almost pulled the trigger on buying a SP140 as my first paramotor. Now I'm searching for a ICE paramotor with a beefy frame. Can't wait to see your next video where you fly the SP140. I'm wondering if the throttle is too "touchy". Looks that way in other videos I have seen.
Nice video Adam. Don't forget the battery and ESC are guaranteed for two years, electric paramotor should last probably ten plus years. Hope you get in the air soon 🙂
Hey I have a chevy volt too. Something you may not know is the gas motor can also apply torque directly to the drivetrain when you are moving fast. It really is a strange car!
I'm not a pilot...yet...but I think there will always be a market for electric paramotors because you can keep them in an apartment. If you fly cross country then you 'must' have a gasoline machine. I think another thing EPPG's are going to need is 'axial flux' BLDC motors. The torque to weight ratio is better than standard 'radial flux' motors, which the SP140 uses, but axial flux technology is still developing.
It occurred to me that you may not know what the offsets are on a Parajet. they are the blocks, that your carabiner straps are attached to. They should be on the right side, of the suspension arms, not the left.
hi adam. i am planing to sell my moster 185 and get the SP140. does the prop mount on both is the exact same? i could keep my 130cm triblade eprop maybe and not need to buy that again. thrust is none of my main concerns so far. gimme a YAY or NAY. tell me if it fits. 😇
To be honest I'm not 100% sure but it does appear to bolt up the same way as the moster. Unfortunately I'm out of town right now, I would touch base with open ppg, they're pretty good about answering technical questions as well
hello. you showed the spark plug??? and from what I could see ... it's running lean= greyish.. the parajet harness you have ..is it exactly the same as a dudek powerset comfort harness. I rang parajet and customer service women gave me a run around?? Kim wood. there's a shortage of Dudek power seat comfort harness. if they are the same harness but with a different logo on .then I could but grom parajet. hence why I am asking...
Thanks Tony for the response... I did notice the plug was more on the lean side as well and made a slight adjustment. I think the seats feel different, they are very similar though. Wouldn't surprise me if they are made in the same factory!
Thank you for the very detailed video. Can you add a trike to this unit? If so what are the downside of doing this? If you can add a trike can you add an extra battery with a switch to give you extra air time by switching battery with the flip of the switch while still in the air?
I think you could run extra batteries in parallel and just create one larger battery still running 100volts. I've talked to a few people about this... an option for sure!
Great video. You mention that weight is about the same, but this does not seem right. The SP140 weighs 80 lbs. The Parajet must weigh about 60lbs. Add one gallon of fuel to get equivalent flight range, and the Parajet comes in at 66lbs, which is 14 lbs lighter. Am I missing something?
Gas weighs about 6# per gallon. Under FAR part 103 which governs ultralight aircraft in the US, the max volume of fuel allowed is 5 gallons. So topped off to the legal maximum (which generally isn't possible with the tank sizes offered on the majority of paramotors) would be dry weight +30#. OpenPPG 4kWh battery is listed as weighing 46# and the 2.2kWh pack is listed as being 31#. The motor used appears to be a Mad Motors c30 and that motor weighs 7.6# vs a moster 185 at 31.2# claimed. So the weight difference between the power systems excluding the frames/mounts/cages/harness is 53.6# OpenPPG + 4kWh vs 61.2# Moster 185 + 5 gallons of fuel. With 4 gallons they are even and below that the 2 stroke is lighter. The energy density difference is MASSIVE and so is the efficiency. High strung 2 stroke engines only turn maybe 20% of the energy of combustion into propulsion, electric motors are closer to 85%. This is why estimation range is a fools game on paper, an aircraft that is overall 10% more efficient will increase the range by 9% on the electric where a combustion engine will only see about 2% improvement. The overall aircraft efficiency varies massively between systems (pilot size/wing size/trim settings/aspect ratio/reflex/angle of attack/ect). I would not be at all surprised to see electric systems paired with pod systems as the benefits of reducing drag should be very noticeable and dead simple to verify in level flight by monitoring the current draw required. It kinda has to be the next step forward, though complex over and beyond my comfort zone sitting here on the couch, it is, I think, well inside the wheelhouse of the aerospace engineers employed in the paragliding industry. What would be a small gain with internal combustion becomes a large gain with battery electric, the same is even more apparent at higher speeds as drag increases exponentially! The math is also dead simple with electric, a 4 kWh battery has the capacity to supply 4 kW for 1 hour. The motor is rated by the manufacturer for 18.6 kW maximum draw, if the electric speed controller is limited to 16 kw (~21.5 hp) to stay on the safe side with a 220A BMS, a full accelerator discharge would be possible in 15 minutes. Pull 8 kW you've got 30 minutes, 6 kW and it'll give you 45 minutes ect. Monitoring the cumulative draw provides the operator with an accurate real time view of how much juice they have left on a system that *should* be absolutely bombproof reliable with only a single moving part. Modern internal combustion engines are engineering marvels, but their complexity is also their ultimate weakness. The fuel delivery has to be a near perfect mixture of air and fuel or they will fail, the internal tolerances must remain perfectly in spec or they will fail, they produce vibration that over time can result in stress related failures in light weight components such as exhaust chambers and mounts and they will fail. Their advantages do come at a SIGNIFICANT cost, best case scenario 400 hours at $5 per hour in fuel is $2,000, regular maintenance per manufacturer recommendation every 100 hours will set you back $300 (without labor) so that's $1200 over 400hrs. The operating cost of a Moster 185 over 400 hrs is $3,200. The price of a new moster 185 is ~$3k. In the big picture, as an aviation power system, that is a jaw dropping amazing value! Brushless motors don't care, supply the proper current and they will spin for years. Flip two of the leads and they will spin in the opposite direction just like that. The battery system should retain >80% capacity over 1,000 full cycles. Check your electric bill, I pay $.12 per kWh so i'll use that. Being, maybe conservative, lets say that 1 kWh = 10 minutes; 400hrs = 24,000 minutes = 2400 kWh. 2400 x .12 = $288 in fuel. The price of a new battery from openppg is ~$1800. Following manufacturer recommendations, the electric should cost $2,900 less after 400 hours of operation ($2,600 less if not including the service at 400hrs). How many of these make it to 400hrs as a reliable power system? I honestly haven't a clue, but the resale value is gone by that point. A 400 hour sp140 is $1800 away from having all of the capacity of a new unit plus a spare battery with >80% original capacity. Game changer or not comes down to how many are willing to sacrifice endurance per flight. For larger schools this should be a no-brainier, keep spare batteries on charge, rotate as needed. If they have electric service at their field it's definitely worth the upfront investment financially. Sorry for the giant post, I'm currently deciding which direction to go myself so writing it all out like this has a large self interest component to it.
Batteries will become more powerful and lighter with time. Two smokes are going to be in a museum, where they belong soon. Loud, vibrating, overheating, fuel problems and fuel transport, shaking worse than a drunk without a bottle. Two smokes are outrageously bad. Even if you are a master mechanic and tear down and rebuild your smoker after each flight, you still can't be sure the thing won't leave you in a field somewhere. The things are trying to come apart at all times. Redrive belts, tubes, mounts and cracking exhaust make two smokes awful. If you love to turn wrench's instead of flying, buy yourself a two smoker. You can have longer flights and much longer down times replacing parts. And don't forget to try to get the gas cleaned up in your back seat of your car. The smell tends to remind you of all the fun you are having.
