The Graflight V-8 diesel claims the highest fuel efficiency of any general aviation powerplant, 15 percent more fuel-efficient than any other diesel aircraft engine,
How ridiculous a claim. Maybe it doesn’t consume jet fuel but produce it?
I wonder why all these aviation ventures start by creating unrealistic expectations, both on technology, timelines and cost. Then all people see are disappointments after disappointments. Being humble and engineering a product until it is working doesn’t seem to be a quality shared by many. Selling to investors comes with collateral damage and the most ruthless turn their prospective customers into investors by collecting downpayments for non existing products.
Innovation, aviation and manufacturing are the key strengths in Wisconsin, and EPS is working on all three.
Governor Scott Walker – Wisconsin
I thought it was cheese?
Call me stupid, but I’m getting a feeling that a critical number of such projects are now close to completion and that we will at last get a result. It was, in small part, one of the reasons I recently decided to do a top rather than a complete overhaul (although it was mainly because the innards of the engine, inspected with the cylinders removed, turned out to be in perfect condition).
It really depends on how much investors are willing to burn to see this project trhough, as much as many others of the same kind. And, the product is NOT ready for certification, the sentences used in that article are the same gobbledegook used to pacify investors all over the world.
Peter wrote:
The good news is that the software verification issues are finite and the solutions are within reach. They’ve cost us an extra eight to ten months, but we expect to be on track with production goals in the coming year.
In other words, they have NOT solved the problem. Period. Whether they will in the forseeable future is anyone’s guess.
Once that is frozen, then certification will take another decade or so, by which time the company is either gone or ready to be picked up by some Chinese.
The unmanned aircraft comment inplies, as with prior similar engines e.g. Thielert, that the clearest route for costly development and long term FAA etc approval would be through military funded UAV application. The issue in higher power ranges is that UAVs are choosing turboprops.
Silvaire wrote:
the clearest route for costly development and long term FAA etc approval would be through military funded UAV application
The thing where most GA applications fail today is certification and thereafter the massive cost which has to be split by the number of applications which can actually be sold. That has caused an upward spiral in cost which has in itself made new projects very unlikely to succeed unless there is almost unlimited funding.
An engine like this, if you calculate that they now work at it for 10 years and be VERY conservative saying it cost 1 million per year to certify (most probably multiple of that), that is 10 million $ which they have to split over the engines they can actually sell. To compete with the Lyco and Conti Sauris they are trying to deplace, the price of the engine should be in that region, so about 50k. To build one of those and keeping the company running at the same time may well cost 40k so they would have to sell a good number to break even if ever.
Make no mistake, I really want all of them to succeed. I am so sick and tired of this old junk in our planes which start only every odd time without the proverbial raindance and sacrificing goat procedures that I would most probably be there right in the front line if a proper replacement which runs like a present day device comes on the market. It is a sad joke that over 70 years after the originals were made we still have books written about running these things. No car driver would accept that. I don’t see why we should.
They are talking 230HP-420HP. What airframes would that be used on?
There is very little flying with more than 300HP.
I wonder if these projects are waiting not for certification but for something quite different: some non-GA volume application; probably a drone? If they were really and honestly working through certification for GA, we would be hearing about the gradual progress with an Avidyne-style blog 
Well, currently the strongest usable engine we have has 155 hp with the THielert. The SMA appears to be a total niche product. So what the market is looking for is the segment between 180 and 300 hp. Possible the engine is intended to be sold with the same core but different ratings such as certain current engines are, some rated at say 270 hp others at 310 e.t.c. The question will be how economical it will be under these circumstances.
But to me it’s clear, if there would be something like a plug and play (within limits) replacement for the current O360 to TSIO540 engines and possibly more which does not cost significantly more than a normal engine replacement, it will be a hit. Only I lack the confidence that we will see this in our lifetime.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Once that is frozen, then certification will take another decade or so
Only, if you don’t know how certification works… EASA is rather quick, actually.
