I totally understand and respect that. There is only so much that we can do to try and fix the reputation of Flat Top Paramotors. Dell has some very strong opinions, is a bit too vocal about them, and sadly I don’t believe the reputation of FT can be fixed until he is gone. I just wish that people could see the other more down to earth and fun side of Dell that never seems to come out on camera or in writing. I guess for now we will push through and hope the brightest days are still ahead.
Admittedly for sure. Though with the right battery (or future battery) the X4 becomes a really nice motor with it’s fold up frame and zero torque. With the right battery the efficiency hit of four small props vs one large one becomes less important and the market increases.
Where does it come out? Seems like people are who they say they are when they say it so vehemently and repeatedly. It’s as if he’s intentionally cultivating a reputation for pi$$in the rest of the community off. Having a ‘very strong opinion’ is one thing. Attacking people that do not hold your opinion is just being a jerk. Especially when your opinion lacks any merit or factual support at all. He’s downright evangelical about himself and his equipment.
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As much as I would love to tear into a specific someone here, and give people my thoughts on who they should or shouldn’t work with… I think it would just take this thread in the wrong direction, and honestly would just start to look like a lot of the stuff we don’t like.
I’m not a mod, nor do I have any higher position over what another person says here, perhaps we keep this community thread one that tries to help each other out, and progress on the topic, vs singling out people and the past… doesn’t mean ignore events, just try to keep on topic, if that makes sense 
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I assume you’ve run the #'s – What size batch is a respectable batch for both parties, subjective of course.
If I was to get into the battery part of it - I would not be looking at only the PPG end – I own a Flexwing Trike now and keeping my eye out for an affordable battery to convert. Right now OpenPPG has the most respectable package I’ve seen power/$$ wise.
The only next best thing is to diy a pack. But realistically - all the hrs and not to mention possible frustrations put into a diy pack – to save 300 - 500$. At 56 I am at the point where things like this I would rather purchase and just work some over time to cover the cost. I only wish I was pretty enough to be a sex worker, than I could enjoy the overtime🤣
Cheers
I have a brother which in many ways has a similar personally to Dell so combine that and working with dell and I feel like I understand him better than almost anyone else. Long story short, Dell is a good person with the right intentions, but has an extremely polarizing personality, has extremely strong beliefs, and is not afraid to say them to anyone in any situation even if it includes viciously bashing them. On the other hand he is one of the most generous, fun, knowledgeable, and insightful people you could ever meet.
Everyone has their strengths and weakness. Dell has some incredible strengths beyond about anyone I know, but in turn some extremely large weaknesses.
Those are my thoughts on the infamous Dell Schanze. If you want to bash him, have at it, but I’m not going to talk about him anymore on this forum so we can focus more on E-ppg like what we are here for.
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I haven’t actually contacted any battery assembly company about this, but I would imagine doing a batch of at minimum 50 batteries would be needed for a reasonable battery cost and optimally more than one batch per year to keep things flowing. So I would imagine that 100-150 batteries per year is where it might pay off the capital in a reasonable amount of time, but I really don’t know. Paul would be an excellent person to ask about this.
Building a diy pack can be frustrating especially when you have almost 300 cells in the pack. At the same time one issues could potentially destroy the $1k or more that you have invested into the pack, but if you know what you are doing they you can perfectly optimize the battery pack for your specific application and have the best possible perfoming battery for that use. In fact I found that so many people want optimize li-ion battery packs for model aircraft that I have a small side business making custom batteries for people’s drones and model planes. It’s fun as I can typically give them a between a 50 to 200 percent better flight time at a very competitive or better price than a lipo so they are happy and I can make upwards of a few hundred bucks for a few hours of work in an evening.
A friend of mine did the course and kind of liked him, tolerated him. Found him to be more of a knowledgeable really pushy used car salesperson type personality, paraphrasing my friend.
From what I have seen on the internet – an excellent PPG pilot but a bag full of bats type of crazy IMHO.
Cheers
Sweet gig. I guess custom building and shipping those little r/c packs can work as the price/kwh is way higher for those tiny LiPos.
I haven’t even started shipping yet, it has all been local!
They contact me, request a battery and within 2 weeks it’s ready for them to pick up the battery and they pay for the battery at pickup.
So basically what you are here for is to copy the OpenPPG stuff, without giving back. Yeah that does sound like someone who would fit right in with Dell.
We already have an ePPG that is price competitive with petrol, it is called the SP140 and you can order one on this site. If you think you can build a better battery than Paul and Zach, bring it forth.
There are so many claims of better batteries(solid lithium, air cells etc ) that until they materialize, they are just another promise.
Will you be here one day telling us the SP140 is a death trap and unless we buy the eTop, we will all die? That’s what your hitching your wagon to.
If you research the history of the flat top, you will see that once Dell has what he wants from you, you will be discarded like a used tissue.
I don’t think Austin has those intentions. And competition’s good for everyone. I think you’re being a bit harsh.
Heads up I’m going to close this thread down at the end of the day it’s not a good direction.
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I understand your concerns, but I have hundreds of posts that you can see of me helping people out. Also their is very little too nothing that I have copied intentionally. Due to the nature of design and our comparable focus, many aspects are similar, but I have never tried to intentionally copy anything. In fact I have changed some of my designs after OpenPPG came out with theirs to put additional distance between them.
I believe I can make a more advanced E-ppg battery, but there are many unknowns and I would just need to build it to find out. If it does turns out well, I would absolutely love to make it available to sp140 pilots wether through OpenPPG or from us.
I promise I won’t be saying that. You can see dozens of places where I have praised the OpenPPG team for developing such an excellent performing and low cost E-PPG and I have never once put it down.(I have asked questions about parts that I was concerned about, but Paul has always put me to ease as most of the time things where not what they seemed.) Also I have purposely tried to keep my business entirely out of this forum as this is not an appropriate place to advertise things like that and it typically results in people going way off topic. (like right now😉)
I do not wish to dissuade you from trying to make a better battery for ePPG. Quite the opposite. Sometimes crazy ideas do work but until it is done it is only an idea. And I like the idea of using the same cells from a Tesla pack for the improvements Tesla did (like adding silicon to the cathode). I think it is smart to leverage Tesla’s improvements.
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I do have the Tesla prototype battery that we will begin testing shortly. The biggest issue is that the voltage sag is a little higher than optimal. So they will work for a foot launch E-PPG, but it’s pushing it enough that the throttle would need to be limited to under 17kw(my testing showed this to be a reasonable limit for these cells) and at low battery the throttle would need to be watched to ensure the voltage does not drop below the BMS limit if you transition from a cruise to a fast climb. On the other hand by going to a trike with an 8+ kWh battery these problems would entirely go away and the cells would really start to show their advantages such as self heating capabilities for cold weather, insane cycle life, high capacity, and low cost.
(Its probably really stupid of me, but the temporary case is a heavy duty card board box🤔)
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Ya I really don’t see it copying. Like sure you are using the same motor (we did have mad motors design it for us specifically, but I told them I was fine for them to put it up and sell it to others) but the motor is just one component even if it is a main one. Like if the motor, ESC, controller and same battery setup then ya that just copying.
I guess no one has seen the unit you are making, but ya hope the components aren’t just the same and the frames different that would be lame.
And it is kinda weird that you only like info to go one way, wish you didn’t have to hide the components you are using because of business secrets or whatever.
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Yup. Build it, produce it in some quantity for a cost that’s less than people want to pay for it, ship it, support it.
Speaking of different frames, would I need a different frame to use a 150cm prop? I believe at one point you showed a video with the larger prop and it was incredibly quiet. I cannot stress how valuable being quiet is to farmers and neighbors not getting annoyed and thus trying to get ppg shut down at an lz.
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Ya we i do have a few frames that are in the 150cm size, but they are a few generations behind in changes. So you couldn’t just take the component off the current Sp140 and put them on the 150cm frame.
This is the OpenPPG forum, so I don’t like putting a ton of info about our unit here as I feel it could be like advertising. Also we are not too far along so things could change a bit at this point, but if you want info on it, this is what we are looking at:
Thrust: ~170lbs
Battery configuration: 24s11p w/ 21700 cells(also looking at 24s10p)
Battery nominal voltage: 86.4v
Battery capacity: 55Ah
Battery energy: 4.75kWh
Battery weight:~45 lbs
Empty unit weight: ~33lbs
Total weight: ~78lbs
Rated flight time: between 70-75 minutes
Cost ~$8500
Everything is subject to change and possibly by a lot, but this is what the electric flat top is looking to be like.