All,

http://www.geareddrives.com/Buds_philosophy.htm
Has a nice write up in the last Contact mag. I like the features of his
psru----cs, separate lube, clutch arrangement as he did it, offset shaft.

He says "*Build the PSRU so that anyone would be feel good about taking
their grandchildren on a cross country flight.* Safety being our first
consideration, we do not advocate the use of belts, chains or planetary
gears in something as important as a propeller drive. Belts break,
chains stretch, and planetary gears are simply not designed to operate
at high RPM's and under such a great load as they are under while in use
in an airplane. Planetary gears do well in situations that only require
high RPM for a very brief period of time, but are not designed to
operate under consistent and continuous use at high RPMs. This is a
recipe for disaster in our opinion. Spur gears, as we use in our PSRU,
on the other hand, are designed to safely operate at a high RPMs and
under continuously use. We chose to use what we know to be the most
dependable and reliable technology for this application because our
objective was to do what makes sense in terms of safety, reliability,
and ease of maintenance. "

Erstwhile comments on the planetary? What do you think Mistral makes of
this? Of course his re drives are mostly made for V8's but I really like
the clutch feature as he implements it!



Marc Wiese


I talked to these people at OSH and they don't have a clue. The centrifugal clutch
is nice. Also the yearly Chev V8 conversion. Here this year gone the next.

-- 
Paul Lamar ...No rotor no motor.

I also spoke with Bud at OSH and I believe his words were "I'm not interested in that" when
I asked him about a 3:1 ratio.  As Paul mentioned, his interest is only for recip auto
conversions, he does have 700hrs on his 383ci SBC however.  His price is up there too at
around $9k.  At that point I would just use the Mistral PSRU.  Personally, I don't understand
the concern about planetary gears that are designed properly....heck, pretty much all turbo
props use planetary gear sets as far as I know, and if a turboprop isn't high rpm, then I
don't know what is...

By the way Paul, I looked for you at the "Design Of Water Cooled Aircraft Cooling System."
I figured you would show up at that forum and I wanted to meet you in person, oh well,
maybe next time....

Heath

Sorry I missed you.
I usually don't do the forums. How did that one go? Who was the speaker?
Any interesting tid bits you can share.