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When will a diesel be available for my aircraft? |
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News, facts, and comments on the coming revolution for piston-engine aircraft.News of February 28, 2009What is new on the aero diesel front? A crystal ball exercise.What is new on the aero diesel front? Your superficial impression could be: ‘Not much.’ Wrong. The next major events we are waiting for are the FAA certification of the Austro 300 and the STC for the Maule MX-9-230 with SMA engine. Both will constitute significant breakthroughs because it will be the first significant FAA certification since the Thielert bankruptcy which threw a serious doubt, especially in the US, on the very notion of aero diesel. Less of that in other parts of the world: The slow but certain phasing out of Avgas pushes polits and FBOS to look eagerly at what is next in the niche. Then, we should witness flights of the first Van’s experimentals with the SMA engine. Then, we expect important news from DeltaHawk Engines, from Wilksch Airmotors and later from Gemini, all of them being 2-stroke engines in the 100-180HP range giving full satisfaction as prototype levels. We expect the next important development for Wilksch will be the STC for the IndUSAviation diesel powered Thorpe T-211 100HP. Later but we are talking of a few years, we expect to see flying the SMA 4-cylinder 280HP, which will be good news for owners of Cessna 206 to begin with. posted at 6:03 PM News of February 10, 2009The new Europa was demonstrated with the Wilksch diesel 2-stroke engine at Ashburton, NZ
 One of the crop of interesting new aircraft at the SAANZ flyin at Ashburton, New Zealand was this Europa ZK-ZEB, which was built by Peter Austin of Whitianga. It was first registered on 11/2/08 and had just flown off its restrictions in time to fly to Ashburton. Some of the major interest in this aircraft was in its engine, and the cowlings were off nearly all day Saturday while the builder explained the engine installation to a steady stream of interested homebuilders. The engine is a Wilksch Airmotive watercooled 3 cylinder diesel which is both turbocharged and supercharged, and runs on Jet A1 fuel. It has flown successfully in several aircraft overseas. Thanks to Blue Bus for the photo of ZK-ZEB with its cowlings on. The lower photo shows more detail of the engine installation. See http://nzcivair.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-europa-with-new-engine-at-ashburton.html DieselAir Comment: The Wilksch engine seems today the one diesel 2-stroke which is the closest to market applications. We see it as a good contender for the engine of the next generation of trainers. posted at 2:30 PM |
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