We don’t get a lot of -10°c to -15°c any winter and at the moment there are more Rotaxes flying around here than all the other engines combined. At least that was the case yesterday.
Yes, sensible people here stay on the ground during the coldest and darkest months anyway. Taking the time to fix, upgrade and polish the aircraft for the summer season, regardless of the brand of the engine in the aircraft. But, nonetheless, Rotax in cold weather simply do not work in any satisfactory way, but Lycomings and Continentals do.
Have to add. This is rather odd, thinking of all the millions and millions of snow mobiles Rotax has produced, all of them working just perfectly in temperatures down to -40 to -50 C.
That’s probably because the snowmobile riders dress according to temperature, hence for them the engine works in a satisfactory way…
T28 wrote:
That’s probably because the snowmobile riders dress according to temperature, hence for them the engine works in a satisfactory way…
That of course, but there is also an element of designed for purpose here. Snowmobiles use electric heating elements (heated handle bars, heated seats, heated suits, shoes…) They have generators to handle that in extreme cold, and a lot of heating is needed travelling at 70-80 km/h in -40 deg C.
Temperatures falling below -10 is not uncommon for an aircraft, but a Rotax is obviously not designed to handle that.
LeSving wrote:
One thing I have experienced during the extreme (record breaking) and continuous cold weather we have had during January and February is that Rotax in let’s say below -10 to -15 deg C depending on details, is as good as useless because: You freeze to death The outside forward view is zero at times due to dysfunctional heater/defroster
I would say thats a failing of the aircraft design and not the engine. The heater in a Comco C42 is far better than any 0-200 powered machine that I have ever flown.
Bathman wrote:
I would say thats a failing of the aircraft design and not the engine. The heater in a Comco C42 is far better than any 0-200 powered machine that I have ever flown.
Not necessarily. For non certified aircraft, as I mentioned above, you can simply install an exhaust heater. I bet that’s what has been done on the C42. But can you do that on a certified aircraft? Is the exhaust system part of the engine, or part of the aircraft certification vise?
LeSving wrote:
But can you do that on a certified aircraft?
Yes.
Yes.
MH, are you posting this in order to solicit PMs from people asking you how much you would charge for developing the EASA design package for it?
We have done this before, as you know. Please read the Guidelines. To advertise, one needs to usefully participate.
It is not rocket science. If you want to use EuroGA to get business, you have to put something into the community.
In the past, posts like this (we’ve had several people doing this) were simply deleted, and will be deleted from now on.
Peter wrote:
MH, are you posting this in order to solicit PMs from people asking you how much you would charge for developing the EASA design package for it?
No, I am just constantly amazed about the items supposed to be impossible on certified aircraft. For exhaust work I would recommend Gomolzig, they can manufacture the changes and certify them, too. Or go via the manufacturer. Most aircraft manufacturers are very open to good suggestions from their users. As I recall we had no bigger problems with cabin heat on the Rotax-powered aircraft we have certified, though.
Peter wrote:
To advertise, one needs to usefully participate.
As you might know, I did. And for the most parts I think I am in the scarce time I have at the moment. However, I do believe my time is better suited to serve the community in the EASA Stakeholder Advisory Board for iAOPA. Although EuroGA is widely known to be heavy leaning towards anti-EU and anti-EASA, I am reading much of the perceived maintenance difficulties and try to find routes to make it work or to forge rulemaking proposals out of them. (But as you can imagine, they need to be true in the first place to make a valid point). There isn’t much glory in this work, but I don’t care too much about that.
mh wrote:
Although EuroGA is widely known to be heavy leaning towards anti-EU and anti-EASA
Really? That’s not my impression. Well, of course there are some people with that sentiment, but I can’t say I find it to be generally true.
