Doesn’t the Walter have quite a reasonable life in service with the Czech turbine para drop tail wheel aircraft (can’t remember the type’s name)?
They put a Walter on the nose of a Cessna 402 to test whether you might create a PC12 on the cheap, albeit non pressurised.
RobertL18C wrote:
Doesn’t the Walter have quite a reasonable life in service with the Czech turbine para drop tail wheel aircraft (can’t remember the type’s name)?
I am aware of no such aircraft, but the Walter-powered L410 (“Turbolet”) is used for paradropping quite a lot. In the west, they could only sell reasonable numbers of the Turbolet after they re-engined it with PT6es. As far as I remember, the original engines had a TBO of only 1000 hours and some noise issues.
…here it is the SM92T Finist, a Russian samolet but with a Walter 601.
The Walter engine is well proven and GE’s H80 which is hotted version of it has some really neat features. For instance, it has fuel slingers that evaporates the fuel rather than fuel nozzles, which means you’ll never have to overhaul nozzles ever (which is standard on all other TP’s), nor do you risk them spraying wrong and damaging first stage turbine which eliminates the need for a hot section inspection. They’re 3600hr TBO (same as PT6), but with no hot. That’s a major money saver.
The Williams FJ44 has a fuel slinger, but still has a Hot Section inspection (at 2500 hrs). TBO is 5000 hours on all the FJ44 family
The hot section inspections we had done on the PT6 engines on our C90B were not a major event, they cost a lot less than 10,000 dollars each. That’s because nothing was found, it was truly just an inspection. It was done on the wing, just before we sold the aircraft, because people like to buy with fresh inspections.
Didn’t know the FJ44’s had slingers.
PT6’s hot’s tend to be cheaper than TPE331’s. Added bonus, like Neil mentioned, is that they can be done on the plane. If nothing is wrong, it’s not very expensive. But if something needs replacing, it can get expensive. On the TPE (which is the one I’m more familiar with) the first stage turbine – which is the one that runs the hottest and see’s most damage – a new 1st stage turbine wheel starts at $14K+. Then you need stator vanes and balancing etc and it’s easily a $20-25K+ deal. So it pays to keep those fuel nozzles spraying correct as they impact the 1st stage the most. With a slinger type, the 1st stage potentially sees less damage over its lifetime.
Looks very nice.
http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/Cessna-Unveils-Denali-Turboprop-Mockup-226636-1.html
Did they recognise that “denial” is an anagram of Denali? And that they have named the aircraft after a mountain, just like the main competing Company?
mh wrote:
Did they recognise that “denial” is an anagram of Denali?
They have their history of naming issues. Just think of Cutlass / gutless 
…
