EV experience so far

Nope, she wouldn't. She crossed the Atlantic to attend US climate conferences on sailboats both ways. Carbon neutral travel, it was claimed.

But they were high dollar racing yachts which consume lots of resources to build. The crossings each took about 2 weeks. She could have made the crossings in some old beat up cruising sailboat but it would have taken much longer, so in her own way she too chose speed over efficiency. Or she could have just stayed home and attended virtually.

Bottom line is there ain't no free lunch in the world of physics, and all human activities have their upsides and downsides. What we can do is what makes sense personally at any given point.

So, solar and an EV daily driver for me. I'm giving up absolutely nothing and saving money too boot.

But the RV and plane will continue to burn gas, for now.

Not criticizing Greta BTW, she's ok in my book. It's the work of the young to push limits as in every generation. Generally we end up somewhere between doing nothing and throwing out everything, which is as it should be.

Yep, I thought about a LongEZ when I decided to get back into flying. They have amazing numbers, I don't think anything has beaten it even now. Burt Rutan ruled in efficient design.

But my wife vetoed the tandem seating, which is a big part of what gets it that fantastic low CdA. Plus the useful load isn't really adequate for 2 up, full tanks and some gear. The useful load on the RV is 650 so full tanks + 2 ppl + 100 lbs of stuff. I do wish it carried another 10 gallons though. 3 hours plus reserve is a bit short especially for IFR work.

TT, no argument from me. You are right on the added time and expense of ground transportation. That has been the most significant issue for my wife and I to overcome when we got the airplane.

We have a variety of ground transport solutions. Day trips. Backpack gear and folding scooters. Many lodges and hotels will pick you up.

Im too cheap to rent a car at current rates, but Uber is fast and works pretty well.

Our plan for the Chinook is to leave it as a base of operations in an area we want to explore and fly there for a few days. We'll see how that works out.

Little rural airports aren't like big commercial ones. Often they are right where you want to go or close. Theres no traffic and few people, and they're part of the aviation community. We all help each other with repairs, recommendations, rides into town. Theres often courtesy cars you can borrow if you can get them started.

But the real question is why speed and travel time are even a consideration for retired ppl. In our case it's because we keep animals so can't be away from home for more than a few days. That meant that after we bought the little farm when we still had the rpod we never went anywhere. It took too long to get to any destination we were interested in.

Now we go to the beach for the day if we want to. Land and walk over the dune from the airstrip. It's life changing in a way. Something the math behind the travel time misses completely.

Aviation is certainly not for everyone. It's expensive, weather dependent, there's lots of time spent on maintenance, and theres all that pricey fossil fuel. You have to fly a lot or your skills atrophy and that's dangerous. But when it works it's like having a magic carpet, not to mention being the most fun you can have out of the bedroom....

GG, unless you owned the lightest EZ ever built, I think perhaps ole' Burt might not have approved of where the MGW was set on your bird...

But it's all good. That design has never to my my knowledge suffered an in flight structural failure and the builder can set his limits wherever wants. Not sure how well the gear would hold up to those kind of loads long term though. I think lots of them have had gear upgrades from the original design?

In my case the EZ option was vetoed anyhow so I didn't explore its weight and balance any further. Having previously owned a couple of certified planes (Tiger and 35 series Bonanza) my wife has pretty strong opinions about what she is willing to get into (or not get into).

The RV is fine for her, but she still misses the elbow room in our old Bo and the ability to carry a couple more folks occsionally. That was a nice flier and remarkably fast and efficient considering how what it could carry and that it was designed 75 years ago. 175 mph at 11-12 gph, 900 lb useful load, 54 gal fuel. Fairly inexpensive to purchase too. I probably would have gotten another one if I didn't have all the certified aircraft baggade to deal with. But it is and not being an A&P the mantenance cost wouldve killed me.

Since this was a vehicle efficiency discussion, I took a shot at comparing all these vehicles efficiencies, correcting for the square of the speed fur payload. Payload was gross weight - empty weight - fuel for a 500 mile trip with 30 minutes reserve (VFR requirements). I used the designers gross weight and typical real world empty weights to try to keep a lid on the payload optimism. I also did my Prius and a Boeing 787-9 using the same criteria (I adjusted the Boeing numbers down to account for the higher energy content of JetA vs gasoline. And since this is an RV forum I did my Chinook too.

With the Prius as a baseline at 1.0, the Bonanza came in next at 56% better, then the RV6A at 72% better, then the LongEZ at 92% better. So all three light planes beat the best ICE car on the road by a lot, and had enough extra fuel capacity to go much farther. The Prius barely made the distance with reserve.

Are you ready for the Boeing? 154 times more efficient than the Prius considering it's speed and payload. So much for commercial airplanes being inefficient. Boeing rules!

Anyone want to guess how the ole Chinook did? 0.27 vs the Prius. Except its fuel tank was 6 gallons shy... Such is the price of dragging your house around with you.

Now I'd like to consider to a high speed train....

Yeah but it's kinda hard to fly IFR with no radios.