A Geek Goes Flying

Had an opportunity to attend a public presentation by George Bye about the upcoming Part 23 certified SunFlyer 2 and SunFlyer 4 electric airplanes (we also treated him to lunch after the presentation). Exciting stuff. I've been keeping a casual eye on electric airplanes, and have been sort of underwhelmed to date; e.g., the eFan 2.0's hour of flight time only made sense for the most rudimentary of training missions, and Pipistrel's decision to go LSA for the Alpha Electro was mind-boggling, given the fact there's no change to LSA definitions, which still require ICE. (All-electric propulsion is now an option under Part 23.) (Also, the weight limitation of light sport aircraft puts a serious limit on the kilowatt hours you can carry with you.) I wasn't aware battery tech has advanced as aggressively as it has; they've gone from 100 Wh/kg to 260 Wh/kg in 5 years (and anticipate ~350 Wh/kg by the time the SunFlyers are certified). The SunFlyer 2 claims a 3.5 hour

Finally too frustrated with stuttering playback on my Panasonic DMP-BDT320's client, I almost pulled the trigger on an Apple TV 4, intending to run VLC on it. Instead, figured I'd give Kodi a try on the RetroPie I setup over xmas. Followed simple instructions , and then the HD HomeRun Prime showed up when I browsed for UPnP devices. Watching the NFC championship now; perfect picture with no stuttering or other issues (the RPi is connected via Ethernet, haven't tried over WiFi - I have a lot of signal saturation issues from neighbors, here). I'm satisfied!