Keith,

Just playing devils advocate here....

How is running a water cooled rotary without coolant until failure
going to show the masses that it is superior to an air cooled reciprosaur?
The air cooled recprosaur does not have coolant to loose....

One thing both engines have in common is a pressurized oil system,
however, if either engine looses oil pressure, they will both seize.

I guess I am just not sure what the demo will accomplish.

Heath Holbrook

A lot of people are installing auto conversions.  Except for the  VW and
Corvair, all of these are water-cooled, and loss of coolant has  caused a
number of downed planes.
The main thing, though, is to grab attention.  Nobody's ever heard  of a
water-cooled engine running without coolant -- "it can't be  done!" They
will come out of curiosity, even if it's morbid curiosity, and get close
enough to see the pile of broken reciprosaur parts and other  displays.
We won't be just one more engine idea buried in the show somewhere.
Keith
I don't think this is going to work Keith. You will destroy
an engine to impress two dozen people. There used to be a display
in the flea market area of a piston engine running with out
oil as I recall.
Pilots are not all that concerned with the liquid
cooling per se. They want a simple reliable engine. That means one
cooling radiator and one oil cooler with simple, straight
forward, short plumbing. A carb or simple mechanical fuel
injection. Preferable a couple of mags. Something they understand
and are familiar with. They are also impressed by HP and
performance. Rate of climb and top speed. The ability to
burn cheap auto gas is a big plus for the rotary.
Lots of new aircraft piston engines if not most
require expensive 100LL.

> Paul Lamar

It will impress more than two dozen people.  That no-oil engine was a
demo for a cylinder treatment.  It ran a few minutes at a time.  You
remember it now, even though you're not in the market for a piston
engine, because it's something that everyone "knows" an engine  can't do.

Everyone "knows" that the Wankel was a technological dead end,
expensive, unreliable and fragile.  So we show them a cheap engine
yanked out of a wrecking yard, with NO modifications, doing something
that everyone "knows" an engine can't do, and they'll remember it, and
TALK about it.

What we're talking about is getting people to believe in a whole
different TECHNOLOGY.  You should see some of the comments that I got
when I announced in a WAR Replicas forum that I plan to put a  rotary on
my 1/2 scale F4U.

There is no market for the 12A engines.  Heck, I have a whole RX-7  with
the 12A that I can't get $100 for, and that's what I paid for the thing!
 So that's the engine series to use, while pointing out that it's two
generations back (which is why we can afford to history the thing).

One thing that I always tell skeptics when I do a presentation, speech
or demo is to prove me wrong!  If they do their research, they will find
out that I was right in the first place, and they will change sides.

The whole thing with the engine is just to get their attention anyhow.
Can you name 10 of the things exhibitors showed you last Oshkosh?
Probably not.  Show them something amazing and they'll remember it.
When they drive home, they'll be thinking about how the engine in  their
car won't run a minute after losing all of its water, but ". . .that
old, ratty Wankel they pulled out of a wrecking yard kept running!"

They'll talk about it.  The next time the subject comes up, they're
remember and maybe we'll have another rotary flyer.

But once they're looking at the "impossible," they will be more
accepting when they see the other things we want to show them.

Keith

Keith,  I think this is a bad idea period.  I cannot support it.  Our
issue is to build an airworthy engine installation that is clearly
superior to all others.  Destroying a junk engine is meaningless.  Jerry

Keith, while I understand your motive for doing a demo like this, I'm kinda
skeptical of the possible results from a demo of this nature. As Heath [and
jerry] mentioned, I can see alot of people saying, "So, take the water
outta my Lyco and see how long it runs, i've got 300hr's on it already and
it's still going.." Sure it show's that by loosing the water it will run
for a while, which is probably better than the other Alternative Engines
out there [ Subee, V6, etc] but if your trying to convince the Lyco and
Cont. guy's that this is a better route, I'm not sure you'll get that point
accross. I expect if anything, it just re-enforces the fact that the
"Rotary has this terrible extra [ I'm para-phrazing here] system on it
which could fail and cause issue's that my Lcyo doesn't have.. Granted sure
it has less parts, but the Lyco has been proven.. sure its a bit more
expensive.. but consider it just good insurance"

If I was going to go after the the 'crowd' and show them why its a good
engine choice there are other thing's I'd attack.
Some of the comment's I've heard or read over the years are:
1) Its not as fuel efficient
2) Its very hard to cool
3) They only run for 3-500 hrs before they 'blow up'
4) They are hard on prop's due to harmonics and poor vibration issues [some
assume they are worse than a horz oppozed 4 banger]
5) They need a special engine mount.
6) They need lots of extra system's like oil coolers, PSRU's, water cooling
stuff.. Electronic engine controls
7) Because of all the extra system's they aren't any lighter than a Lyco so
why bother
8) The water cooling system 'Can' be made to be more efficient than a air
cooled system, but only specalized engineers can do this properly so it
ends up being more draggy than a typical Lcyo installation.
9) They give little warning before they just blow up [ apex seal failures
etc]
10) you've got to add oil to the gas
11) If you don't run them regularly they will blow up when you start them
[ I think this one comes from car's which use the engine oil for apex lub,
and then the seals carbon up and jam]


I'm sure there are more to the list, I suggest you get a list of
complaint's against the rotary and disprove them, or show that the data is
true, but in reality it cost's  $3/hr more to operate the engine which is
still $xx less than the maint. costs of the Lyco installation. If you can
go through the whole set of issue's and clear them up, then you'll start
changing peoples minds. At the end of the day, if you can show that a
typical installation in a Rv-6 costs $xx and cost's $xx/hr to operate vs
and Lyco installation, this to would show a good comparison.

If you did all this in addition to your test, that might make more people
believe in what your trying to do.
The bottom line is until someone comes out w/ a FWF kit like Engginfeller
[sp] did, we'll probably not see a huge influx of people wanting a rotary.
A proven system that is 'for sale' on the market will do much from brining
the rotary to light.. oh, and it has to be affordable also.. a $50,000
engine isn't going to get anyone interested..

My two cents..

Jarrett

My point is that I'm NOT trying to convince the Lyconental guys as much
as I want to grab the Subaru, Corvair, Geo, Chebby and Ford guys.

They are already wondering which engine to use, and they already plan to
experiment.

The only Wankel which would really impress the "real airplane engine"
guys is the O-200-killer, and it's not here yet.  When it arrives, I
want those guys remembering that they saw a "fragile, unreliable" Wankel
running with a complete loss of water.

If we get them THINKING about the Wankel, enough of them will start
doing their own research, if only to understand what they saw.

BTW, the other day I talked with a pilot who learned German because he
lost the coolant from his P-51.  Care to bet that he would have liked a
rotary?  ;)

The number one argument I've heard against the Wankel is that they are
fragile and unreliable.  People who know nothing else about the engine
"know" that.  All of the details you mention are for people who know
more about the engine, and the only way to get people to believe the
truth is show them something that destroys their most basic "knowledge"
about the Wankel.

If you think about all of the Latest Big Things to appear at Oshkosh and
then fade away, you'll realize why the normal way won't work -- everyone
has seen it too many times.  Give them something that they can't forget
and can't ignore, and you've won.  The glossiest pamphlet means nothing
-- everyone has pamphlets.  Talk means nothing, especially at Oshkosh.
All that counts is when you get them to THINK, and they will only do
that when they're given something which grabs their attention.

I'm not trying to sell them an engine.  I'm there to sell them a CONCEPT
and then get the heck out of their way before they run me over on the
way to embrace it.

Keith

I don't think anybody thinks the Wankel is fragile.
The question I get most often is it burns a lot of fuel.
The second question is what about the apex seals? A problem
that went away forty years ago.

Paul Lamar ...No rotor no motor.

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