flyrotary@lancaironline.net Mailing List Archive

Perhaps of interest to some of the group.........I made a recent inquiry to Paul Janssens of Belgium (Mistral G-300 3 Rotor Engine in a Glasair III) which was detailed

in three issues of "Kitplanes" magazine in the past two years how his installation was doing and as to the current status of "Mistral".........Below is his reply.........FWIW

Kelly Troyer

Kelly,

Mistral has grown again and is backed by a powerful investor group.

they are very hard at work obtaining EASA certification for their engines and will achieve this within a few years. there is massive interest in 200, 300 Hp engines, but also in other HP ranges, and Mistral know they will be very busy for quite some years yet.

as a Customer, i can only vouch that my engine is working very satisfactorily indeed. Mistral back-up has been slow for everyone because of the huge amount of work, but i must say i`ve always been able to get the right answers from them when i needed.

exhaust.....yes...well, i have been putting it off for as long as i could, hoping Mistral would jump on the problem with the first batch of customers. after all, we`re all in the same boat.

but priorities are priorities, and mistral has been forced to set the exhaust question aside for a while.

i have recently started to intensively reserach the problem, and here`s my conclusions so far :

- most exhaust manufacturers use a build and test method. this is less expensive and you get an exhaust that does the job.

- in the case of a rotary engine, this can only lead to a good result by chance. build and test gets very expensive if you have to make your test parts in high heat resistant metals.

an accoustic, flow and thermodynamic similation in a specialised model is expensive, but seems to be the best way to limit the range of test models in order to achieve optimum results. the investment in getting an exhaust which is as good as it can get is required, as it will lead to satisfied customers and hopefully impressive noise certificates.

better get the exhaust thing squared off once and for all by doing it as perfect as we can get.

so we are looking into various options, and i hear Mistral is close to making time for the problem. they are very aware that there is urgency and will come to our help soon.

i have no idea about time frame, but there is no real reason this should take an abnormal amount of time once we get our backs Under it, its just a question of starting off on the right track before we start running.

kind regards,

Paul