| At Sun N Fun I had a very entertaining
interview with the manufacturers of the Wankel Rotary engine. The Wankel
was just been introduced and by the "story told" it was the
"better mousetrap." Well some months have gone by since then
and some manufacturers have had an opportunity to see whether the
"better mousetrap" was all it was cracked up to be.
I for one was very skeptical at first -
that was until I talked to a manufacturer who was flying on it, felt the
engine on an airframe running with NO rubber motor mounts, and watched
it fly, on a plane with one person on board.
At Oshkosh there were at least 4 engines
mounted on planes, including the Hiperlight, the Genesis, the two place
T-Bird, and a Titan Tornado. Now I have not flown on these planes
equipped with the Wankel engine - but I have flown on them or watched
them fly with 503's 582/618's, Jabiru's and 912's. My observation and
conclusion is that the engine does NOT have the power of a 912 - which
it is being used by the factory to compare to.
I would say on the T- Bird it is
comparable to the 582 and performed quite well. On the Titan and Genesis
- planes that require power to fly - my personal opinion is, from
watching the planes fly off the grass strip at Oshkosh that the twin
rotor 75 hp version, is not enough power. On several flights, in hot
humid, conditions it appeared that both craft were flying very close to
the power curve, and had the engines "burped or missed" the
pilots would have been in serious trouble.
Seeing this I made a trip down to the
other end of the field where the Wankel people had a display. As at
Lakeland they did not want to "compare a two stroke snowmobile
engine" "with an aircraft engine." When I brought forward
my observation, that if the engine was not able to meet the performance
of a 582 then it surely wouldn't be equal to a 912 - they kept quoting
"torque curves and graphs." They also indicated that the
manufacturers were NOT following recommendations on the reduction drive
ratio to be used!
Never the less the engine was up and flying on craft and getting hours
put on it. It will be very interesting to see what these manufacturers
have to say at Lakeland.
Another neat thing that came out of the
trip to the Wankel booth was the fact that they are now building and
supplying DIESEL rotary engines for drone aircraft for military
application. These apparently will be available to the public in the
coming year. I was unable to get more information as interest was lost
in me once I started asking questions that couldn't be answered.
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