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Green Propliners?
Electric power holds promise of a new era
Propeller-driven aircraft, the focus of this blog, have been roaring their way across the skies for more than a hundred years. Elegant, useful and amazing pieces of engineering they might be, but it has to be admitted that they are also noisy and spew pollutants wherever they fly.
But help may be at hand, as a pioneering experiment starts to bear fruit.
Those flying pickup trucks
As featured in a previous column, De Havilland Canada built a tough, dependable and versatile series of floatplanes that still dominate airborne commerce in many parts of the world, especially Canada’s remote northern reaches. The classic DHC-2 Beaver was born with a large Pratt & Whitney Wasp Junior radial engine providing the power; noisy but reliable and easy to maintain.
In time, many Beavers were converted to turbine power with Pratt & Whitney Canada’s excellent PT6 delivering the thrust. The larger DHC-3 Otter, also originally fitted with a piston/radial engine, has itself undergone turbine conversions and provides the bulk of ‘lift’ for Canadian floatplane companies, especially those in Vancouver and other parts of British Columbia.
