Flight test · December 2013
First hops, December 2013
Brian flew the first EMG-6 himself. Tow from an ATV, a short landing into nine knots of wind, and a motor that weighed 5.36 pounds on the shop scale.
Brian Carpenter · Rainbow Aviation
First flight was 20 December 2013. The early campaign did not look like a factory rollout. The glider was towed by a four-wheeler, then by a Jeep named Mater, then by whatever would pull a light wing into the air without drama.
The third test hop was towed off the runway by an ATV and landed short into a nine-mile-an-hour wind. That is the kind of number that belongs in a logbook, not a press release.
The favored electric package at the time was a Plettenberg Predator and a Schulze 400-amp controller swinging a RASA folding propeller: 15 kilowatts, about 20 horsepower, 99 pounds of thrust, 5.36 pounds on the scale. Every component in the shop was weighed. Ounces were not a rounding error.
Depending on pilot weight, a single motor, controller, and battery pack can self-launch and climb to soaring altitude — or sit as a sustainer after a tow. Wing-mounted pods take electric or two-stroke packages. The architecture was always modular. That is still the point.