Well, said.

 

The vast majority  who bad mouth the rotary clearly know nothing of substance about the engine. They certainly  don’t understand what motivates us to undertake the extra effort and risk to do this.  Plus they have probably  paid anywhere from $14,000 for an overhauled engine to over $30,000 for a new Lycoming.

 

 The fact that Tracy Crook’s rotary won the Sun & Fun 100 air race in his dirty, fixed pitched aircraft with junk yard rotary against Lycoming engines some of which have been reworked with high compression pistons and probably had close to $40,000 had nothing to do with Sun & Fun deciding to terminate the air race {:>).

 

Let’s look at this way, when you are departing from the herd – you are a maverick and while mavericks are undoubtedly responsible for much of the change in the world, most folks DO NOT like change and therefore do not like the cause of change.  Besides, your $10,000 installation might make their $40,000 installation look – well, antiquated.

 

But, the other side of the coin is that 90% of folks should NOT be doing an alternative engine – it is certainly not for everyone.  As Tracy puts it so well, if we have to talk you into it – then you shouldn’t be doing it.  If you are right for doing it, we couldn’t talk you out of it in any case.

 

So for now we are just going to have to ignore the ignorant – I can’t wait until the 16X comes out and I can put the 30 lb less weight engine with 30 more HP in my Rv-6A – I really don’t care what the Lycoming crowd says.  But, to be fair, there are many on that side who have expressed interest and admiration for the course we have taken – even if it is not their cup of tea and that is all you can really ask for.

 

Ed

 

 

The anti-rotary sentiments are out there in many shapes.
The other day I was surfing for PSRUs, when I read a PSRU manufacturer's diatribe about why he was NOT making PSRUs for the Mazda. Basically he focused on the real and rumored difficulties, past and present, of Mazda rotaries used on aircraft. This had nothing to do with PSRUs at all, but with his prejudiced thinking. There are a lot of rotaries out there being used in aircraft, and a lot of progress made in making them work. I, for one, believe the rotary has the potential of making the piston world get smaller and smaller - this is the real secret fear of all the piston-heads - loss of prestige and money..
Oh yeah, silly me, I forgot an important thing: Lycoming and Continental designed their engines, and they performed perfectly right away, never needing trials, never experiencing problems, never having to issue product warnings or recalls, right, guys!!?? No wonder all the rotary-experimenting poor slobs need to be put straight immediately and often! (For you concrete thinkers out there, this is sarcasm - I don't want to be blasted mistakenly.)
BTW, does anyone have a list of PSRU's that are also made for rotaries? The emphasis today seems to be on geared PSRUs, why is that? What scientific factual reasons prevent us from considering cog belts or chains?
Thank you.