One point I forgot to mention, with 65% power and therefore some advance, doing a mag check in flight there is minimal mag drop on the surefly and the engine is smooth, the other mag behaves like it’s on one mag!
One of the things that’s done on motorcycles is to dual plug large cylinders, like a plane. This is done both by the manufacturers and people who like to modify them. When you go to dual plugs the engine makes best power with (you guessed it) less ignition advance.
It therefore makes sense that when you run your engine on a single plug you get better power with the one having more advanced ignition timing. Since you’re at reduced MP detonation is not an issue – avoiding detonation at high MP on marginal fuel is the reason people dual plug engines, allowing them to retard the full throttle ignition timing without losing power.
With manual mixture control, EGT instrumentation and two different ignition systems you have created an engine development laboratory 
So the bottom line for cruise is
Fuel burn in the cruise reduced from 32l to 30l or less.
It would be really interesting to verify that, but obviously you can’t repeat a before/after measurement
The thing is that all this system can do in cruise is alter the ignition timing. That suggests one could achieve the same by adjusting the standard mags differently. That might of course compromise climb performance.
Well, there is also a probably more powerful spark. In the 1970s I used to build electronic ignition systems for Yamaha 2-stroke motorbikes and – given the existing contact points remained – the better spark was the main benefit. Much longer contact life was the other.
Any improvement in the operating ceiling (best power setting, obviously) would be really interesting.
Does the surefly mag now have EASA approval?
I know it doesn’t have UK approval
Bathman wrote:
Does the surefly mag now have EASA approval?
Almost no US vendor longs to get an expensive EASA STC any longer – no need for’em,
as the two validation procedures of FAA STC for EASA aircraft are easy and cheap.
Jimmy in Jimmy’s world just tested EI from Lycoming on his Lancair. Seems to be a substantial difference. But why should there be? (according to him, the Lycoming T-shirt made the trick )
Peter wrote:
Not so simple AFAIK – examples. The US company has to be fairly keen.
Did do quite some, on both ways, and did not find the US companies to be the major obstacle. Most of the times they just give a sh*t on European Markets and send the needed letter. The easy ones are really easy and doable for everyone, the hard ones struggle most from bad, inconsistent or swiss cheese records to document the state of the aircraft.
LeSving wrote:
Jimmy in Jimmy’s world just tested EI from Lycoming on his Lancair.
No comment on his new mustache? 😂
Peter wrote:
@MichaLSA it would be great to have a thread with details on how to do this. I am sure many would be interested.
Do we really need a thread? It is pretty straight forward since the new EASA Portal got in place: https://portal.easa.europa.eu/login and they even made nice videos to explain the procedures for those who cannot read ;-).
