A tiny, experimental, modified glider took off from the Minden-Tahoe airport Friday morning and landed a record-breaker. Helios Horizon, powered by two electric batteries and one man behind the yoke, cruised over Lake Tahoe, three miles high.
According to National Aeronautic Association official observer Kris Maynard, it well surpasses the previous world record set for electric planes under 500 kilos.
“The standing record prior to today was about 10,000 feet altitude, and this record went to almost 16,000 feet,” Maynard told 2 News Friday morning.
Pilot Miguel Iturmendi says he and the team behind Helios Horizon were working on the plane right up until the ascent.
"The project has been going on for a year and a half,” he said. “We did the first set of flight testing in October and November of 2022 with mixed results."
He says he managed to take the plane up to 20,000 feet in a test flight last month, but without an official NAA observer present, that altitude won’t make the record books. His biggest constraint right now is battery power – it takes a lot of juice to climb.
“We're trying to empty the batteries completely, so that's always dangerous,” he said. “When you get to the last five percent, batteries tend to heat up really quickly, and I think we got within two or three percent of the battery being empty.”
It’s not Iturmendi’s only world record. In 2016, he was a test pilot for the Solar Impulse project, the first solar-powered plane to circumnavigate the globe. He also has his eyes set on taking an engineless glider over 90,000 feet.
He says that his goal is to showcase the future of sustainable flight.
"Electric aviation is really cool. It's really the future,” he said. “We are trying to communicate to the public that electric aviation is viable.”
Friday evening, he packed up Helios Horizon to take it back to his home base in Florida, but he says he’ll be back to the Minden-Tahoe Airport soon to break more records flying electric planes.
*This article was updated to reflect that Iturmendi was a test pilot for the Solar Impulse project. It previously stated that he was the first to circumnavigate the globe in a solar-powered aircraft. That is inaccurate.
