Great weather at Sun & Fun after running a gauntlet of
two squall lines across Northern Florida
on Monday on the way down. Attendance seemed to be down a bit, but saw a
number of old friends and made some new ones.
First morning, I thought Tracy and I would be the only
rotary powered aircraft on “Auto Row”, but Bill Eslick and his wife
Linda showed up and the Chuck Dunlop flew his yellow bird in from Arizona. So we ended up
with 4 rotary powered birds and one Subaru installation that started out as one
of Eggenfellers FWF units and got extensively modified including the owner
(Larry) own gear box design. He also removed the two GM cores that were up
front (similar to mine but that had no ducting on the Eggenfeller installation)
and placed a huge radiator back of the engine. Apparently it was working OK.
I think there were a couple of Corvair engines in some Kr2 aircraft,
but that was about it.
The Cozy Girrls were there with their products tailored for
the canard birds and an very nice aluminum bezel (goes better with glass
cockpit styles than my “steam gauge” format) which remotes the
display and control buttons of my EFISM unit. Ed Klepeis was there with his
fine looking radiators and other components. Ed’s been suggesting I
should exchange my old GM cores for some of his fine radiators, but I keep
resisting as long as the cores keep doing the job. So I kept a close eye on Ed
to make sure he didn’t approach my aircraft with an ice pick {:>}.
As some of you know, I got dragged over to the “dark
side” and got talked into designing a monitor for the Emag/Pmag
electronic ignition system. Got to demonstrate it to the Emag guys and they
were favorably impressed, so it looks like right now me and my partner will be
the first ones to have a unit on the street. But, I’m sure the EFISM big
guys won’t be far behind.
I guess the only thing a bit disappointing is that after 10
years, we still don’t have more of the flying rotary’s show up.
But, certainly trying to make it here from California and other distant places given
the distance and weather can be problematic.
Its not that I’m getting tired of seeing the same
faces, but would be nice to see a “second generation” of 3 or 4
installations sitting along side us old guys with our old mounts.
In any case, the bull sessions were great and we had our own
little camping area were most of us were able to camp out.
Hope to see more of you there next year.
Ed
Ed Anderson
Rv-6A N494BW Rotary Powered
Matthews, NC
eanderson@carolina.rr.com
http://www.andersonee.com
http://www.dmack.net/mazda/index.html
http://www.flyrotary.com/
http://members.cox.net/rogersda/rotary/configs.htm#N494BW
http://www.rotaryaviation.com/Rotorhead%20Truth.htm