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Message
Ok, Al. I did misread it. No
question that the rotary's did burn more fuel than the Lycomings, I
had interpreted that as burning more fuel/making more power as they flew
faster than the lycoming powered aircraft during that one phase of the
comparison.
I didn't zero in on the part of the
article indicating that they were all going the same airspeed when the
fuel burn comparison was made.
But, it still was not as informative
as it could have been, in that these were unusual "P" port engines - not the
normal side ports that 90% of us are flying. If both rotary
engines had been the normal side port, I think the comparison would have been
more interesting (and perhaps more likely to have been closer in both the power
and fuel burn).
All of that said, I still think the
comparison showed the rotary can indeed "stay" with a Lycoming. Perhaps
burning a bit more - but as you pointed out - cheaper fuel. So when
the day is done, I think the argument has been raised to a higher level.
Its no longer about whether a rotary can compete with a Lycoming, it clearly can
do that, so the questions will now focus on the relative difference in costs of
operation, reliability, cost of maintenance, effort in building your
own FWF, etc.
Of course, this is all my 0.02 as
usual.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 11:04 AM
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Rationalization
was [FlyRotary] Re: Questions from a potential rotaryphile
Ed, you may want to reread the article. They weighed all the planes,
added ballast to the light ones to equal things out, then all flew same speed,
altitude on long cross country. The reported fuel use differences were
real.
Only points they didn't consider was the fact that both rotaries were
burning 87 octane instead of 100LL. I don't know the difference in energy per
gallon, but there sure is a difference in $. So if they compared cost for the
trip, rotary would win.
It would have been nice if the author had compared the operating expense
difference, but in all fairness, pilots tend to think in terms of GPH.
Even the Aviation Sport article
supports that conclusion, even if they did dwell on the fuel burn (and
Noise {:>),being higher. Well of course, the fuel
consumption was higher - it was producing more power and beating the
lycoming power
RV-8.
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