DAVID G. ULLMAN
The JabirWatt
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
...." Lewis Carroll
The JabirWatt is a stock Jabiru J230-D complete with its original Jabiru 3300 IC engine and with four Electric Ducted Fans (EDFs) mounted inboard on the wings. The Jabiru was purchased as a wrecked, stripped hulk in 2016 and rebuilt over the next eighteen months. The Jabiru airframe is ideal for IDEAL experiments as it was originally designed as a four-place airplane and decommissioned to two-place to meet LSA requirements. Thus, it has space behind the front seats for over 300 lbs ( 136kg) of batteries while staying with the weight and balance limits.
The EDFs are 120mm off-the-shelf model airplane units powered by a custom LiPoFe 120wh/kg battery pack. The four EDFs are not enough to sustain flight, but sufficient to collect data to compare with wind-tunnel and theoretical results.
The JabirWatt was first flown in 2018 as a stock aircraft to gather baseline data. JabirWatt experiments were begun in July 2019.
An interim report detailing the results of 2019 experiments was developed in December 2019. Click here to read the report.
Click on the video to view the JabirWatt in flight