Kieth,
Your goal of promoting the rotary is great, there is no one on this list who
wouldn't be happy to see the rotary gain the market share it so rightfully
deserves. Testing to failure however will be viewed as a negative even
though it should be seen as a positive thing as you are trying to
demonstrate. Most homebuilts still use the Continnentals and Lycomings which
would indicate to me the majority builders still respect these engines as
good source of power for their airplanes. They have a number of advantages,
track record, availability, reasonable price, familiarity, ease of
installation, straight forward operation, light wieght. So if this is where
a lot of the homebuilders mindset is at, seeing an engine running without
coolant will say "glad I don't have to worry about that with my Lyc" to a
large number of these builders. Some builders will see your point but at the
same time will also see all the extra work and complexity that obviously has
failure modes as shown by your demonstration. Name me one builder who hasn't
heard KISS. People seeing an accident report will see "rotary" and that is
all, if they have a decent knowledge of these engines they will investigate
further and find that the faiulure was caused probably by some ancillary
component and be happy with that. Unfortunately these are the already
converted.
When I first started noticing the homebuilt sector a new plane came out that
caught my attention. It was called the Lightning and was powered by a 3
litre aluminum Buick. Boy did that look good, I could never have afforded to
build or fly it but it had my attention. It had style. At that point the
engine didn't really matter, if it was designed and built around the Buick
fine, it worked and it had style and the details for the installation were
all right there in the plans. Most kit manufacturers use the C & L in their
kits because the installation is easy and straight forward, been done a
million times before by Cessna, Beach etc. This is where Mistral might be
able to help. If they are successful with their FF package then we could see
someone prominent run with it. Could you imagine if Van's  or Cessna chose
to offer Mistral as an alternative ? It will still take time and a lot of
it.
I think the biggest thing against the rotary is the lack of a FF package and
the lack of  "The Rotary Installation Guide" as an alternative. This is why
there are so many Soobs out there, not because they're better engines but
because they are easy. Even the guide could help, pick it up for twenty
bucks and read "insert part A into hole B", "buy widget X, part number
xxxx". Again this would take time to get on the market and into the air with
100 planes before it could pickup any momentum. Also what if the guide was
published by Moller, a marketing genius but would it help the cause ?
What if rotary or two started to win at Reno ? Hey that would get noticed.
Unfortunately once again the rules are stacked against the rotary so it
would require a very non-conventional (expensive) one of engine. Think of
the sex appeal promotional value of that plane though.
I really think that this will just take a lot of time, and constant positive
exposure at every opportunity. Don't give an infidel the opportunity to bad
mouth the rotary to ten of his friends with a demonstration of failure.

John Gibbons




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