this little greek turboprop engine looks promising to me!
https://www.heronengines.com/
SandorMaracsko wrote:
promising
130 shp @ 40l/hr. That’s about the power of a Rotax 915 with 60% more consumption.
Rotax 915 on hi power setting is more than 30liter per hour, and tbo 1200hours…
So no way to be 60% higher
Under LOP regimes, there is a beautiful linear regression formula between fuel flow (FF), compression ratio (CR) and horse power (HP), the formula was produced by Dr George Braly from GAMI Inc, he also show that the coefficients tend to improve a bit when one use his GAMI injectors or FADEC controllers
(sarcasm) I am not sure if he ever heard about ROTAX 915 engines, I am sure he will be impressed with 80HP (60% of 140HP) at 5GPH as it’s an outlier of his data regression, are the numbers in this thread fall under some sort of I-FF, Indicated Fuel Flow? or Internet Fuel Flows?
I am just talking about engine FF vs HP and ignoring airframe IAS (Internet Indicated Airspeed)
If you take a DA40D at 70% one gets 115kts using 5gals US or 19liters per hour of either jet A or Diesel and with a 45min reserve of 5 hours.
The questions one has to ask are:-
Can a turbo prop compete with this FF.
Yes it will go faster but how many of the GA population really want or need to travel at speed.
AFAIK much of the GA population, travel short distances of around 2 hrs and spend much of the time sightseeing and taking photos. Just enjoying being in the air and the freedom it can give.
gallois wrote:
AFAIK much of the GA population, travel short distances of around 2 hrs and spend much of the time sightseeing and taking photos. Just enjoying being in the air and the freedom it can give.
A turbine runs so smooth and is so reliable that once you have flown one you want one, it is addictive. I fly a turbine for a while now and I lately considered letting my SEP rating expire as all I do is renew it every 2 years… So if this technology becomes available at a more reasonable purchase price, I think there would be high demand. On top on many models you can use just about any type of fuel, the actual engine is light and it should be possible to design versions which have far superior take off power to similar size and weight piston engines. What is still missing in some affordable turbine engines in the 300hp class which could power all the 4 seat airplanes.
Pistons sip fuel compared to turbines.
Turbines make sense high up where TAS is higher for the same fuel flow.
Don’t get me wrong, I like turbines, but these „new“ tiny turbs popping up are very likely never going to be found in every other (former) SEP. I suspect some subsidies and grants are involved when a greek company develops a turbine engine for piston airframes?
Like the proposed UL with a turbine, its frivolous marketing (panem et cercensis) for the masses, nothing more.
A biofuel avgas replacement for the smaller lycontis would help more. . .
