One year ago… The revolution in oil-powered general aviation is at least three years away
There has never been any significant progress in aviation without first an improvement in engines. A low-power high-efficiency turbine engine, for example, would enable the creation of all kinds of dramatically superior aircraft. But none of the kit companies or even the certified four-seat aircraft companies can readily afford to invest what is required.
Enter Turbotech, a startup in the Islamic Republic of France. They say that they have a 140 hp turboprop engine that burns fuel at approximately the same rate as a 140 hp Rotax (piston) engine
How long before this can be dropped into a certified airframe? The founders said that if everything goes perfect and nothing at all has to be changed in their current design, the engine could be EASA/FAA-certified in three years.
I hope to proved wrong about the 2028 date (three years from 2025), but it seems that the engine is more or less available in a more-or-less-certified airplane, the Carbon Cub:
It’s $690,000 as a “builder-assist” kit airplane (the owner doesn’t do anything challenging!):
A factory-built version (“light sport”) is “coming soon”. Note that this plane will be delivered with the awesome new Garmin AXIS panel.
It looks as though this is about $350,000 more expensive than the piston (Rotax) version, adjusted for comparable avionics.
There’s an $1,800 Starlink option, but that is perhaps best skipped given that SpaceX/Starlink have recently discovered how to charge Rockwell Collins- and Honeywell-style prices for subscriptions that work at aircraft speeds.
The sound and the fury:
Thank you, thank you, thank you Phil. 0 rainbow flags. 0 hajibs. 1 crazy cool aircraft.
That said, the SPL from just the video is triggering my tinnitus. Isn’t that runup hard on the brakes? Frickin’ tail just pops up. I hope my landed gentry neighbor with the helicopter doesn’t get ahold of one of these. There’s enough noise at 2AM as it is. $690K for a Cub, très moderne.
Been wanting to share this:
https://aakash.substack.com/p/why-jet-engines-arent-made-in-china
Greta hasn’t replied to my emails on meeting up at Oshkosh 2030.
If you want to see a gathering of “legacy Americans”, EAA AirVenture is the place to do it! Nearby supermarkets feature migrants in African-Islamic garb shopping with EBT cards (i.e., modern American “society” (to the extent that randomly selected humans can be said to form a “society”)), but volunteers inside the event grounds are nearly 100% white (people receiving SNAP are apparently too busy to volunteer). Attendees are probably 95% white (some visitors from Japan in warbirds yesterday; some young Black attendees from Milwaukee, perhaps).
Only took 60 years for the heat exchanger to make its way from the Chrysler turbine car to an airplane. It was amusing to watch aviation tube act like it was just invented yesterday. The heat exchanger was the miracle which made turbines efficient enough to barely replace pistons before overhaul costs, approximately.