dan riebs wrote:

At the end of your Sport Aviation article,  you talk about
the difficulties of cooling a rotary, water-piston owners
are having the same problem.

1. Nobody uses water cooled engines because nobody else
does. Dumb, but true.

2. Burt Rutan told me he doesn't use water cooled engines
because they aren't reliable. I don't believe it.

3. The radiator induces tremendous drag, a valid complaint.

Instead of hanging a traditional radiator in the breeze, why
not integrate the oil, coolant, and turbocharger cooling
into the engine cowling? You'd get cooling anytime the
engine was running and the cooling induced drag would be
dramatically reduced.

I am not sure I follow you here. Do you have surface rads
in mind? If so plenty of problems with those. PL

1. EAA Experimenter published my letter on the subject and
said they didn't know why no one did this.

2. In the next issue a respondent suggested what I proposed
was the equivalent of building a bomb. I didn't feel like
telling him he had the same problem with a garden hose.

3. This used to be done using floats and leading edges
instead of the engine cowling on some of the old racing
seaplanes.

Nobody does this because no one else is doing it. Dumb, but
true. The guy selling aircraft modified Subaru engines in
Sport Aviation says he'd try the idea if the had time.

I'm just an airplane junkie, I can't afford to fly anything
at all yet. Would you please try this?

 
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