Paul,
I walked around the homebuilt area several times seeking
rotorheads, but only found a couple.
Ran into Atkins, and then Dunlap.
Did I miss something? or was that it for rotary power?
Archie
That was about it. Did you get to the Mistral tent?
Also a P-port 2 rotor Velocity went 205 MPH in the 400 mile Dayton to
OSH
race.
--
Paul Lamar ...No rotor no motor.
Actually that's not quite true. I did the same walkabout through the
homebuilt
area and found not much except Mistral's tent and a few aircraft. I
then
stopped by the Contact magazine booth. They mentioned, and I
subsequently
visited, a booth out near the main road to the museum where Rotary
Aircraft
Engines www.rotaryae.com had a few samples mounted on auto gyros and a
motorcycle. Prices are up in Mistral's range.
Jack Hilditch
Why were they not in the real show?
They have been around for years. IMHO they have some sort of association
with Moller. I have never seen a real one.
Looks like a bunch of wood mockups to me. If it were real
that belt drive would be a hazard to the e-shaft :)
Are they selling stock? :) Is Barger Moller spelled backwards? :)
Paul Lamar
Very low power ratings for their displacements, short intake runners.
"RAEs
development partner, Rotamax" quoted from their site, isn't that Moller ?
John Gibbons
Maybe this will help. The parent company is called Fan Cool. They build
apu's to drive coolers on semi's when they're parked. RotaMax is their
marketing name for their line of rotaries. Yes, the original basis for
their engines did come from Moller. It is important to understand that
the
RotaMax engines are NOT the same engines that Moller was running in his
"SkyCar". The RotaMax types are charge-cooled and liquid cooled. They
run
in two displacements: a single of 650 cc and a twin in 1300 cc. They are
rated at 85 and 170 hp. I have not seen the weights on their Bloc II
lightened engines.
To the best of my knowledge, RotaMax does not currently
offer a turbo version, but one or more of the OEM's they've been supply
beta
engines to for evaluation may have been playing with turbos. They've been
concentrating on getting OEM industrial type companies interested in their
engines. I've seen run data on the two-rotors set up as generators and
the
outputs seem reasonable. Apparently the carb versions (what you see in
the
photos from OSH) don't turn on all of the OEM's, so they have been working
on a Bloc II engine using fuel injection and are lightening the engines
even
more by going to a lighter flywheel and starter. I suspect that the
latter
will be geared, but don't know this to be the case. To the best of my
knowledge, Moller doesn't really have much to do with RotaMax.
Apparently,
RotaMax is required to pay a royalty fee to one of Moller's companies
based
upon sales.
A friend of mine from out-of-state sent me a copy of one of
those filings public companies have to send in quarterly to the SEC from
one
of the Moller companies. Moller states that revenues from the RotaMax
licensing deal are coming in slower than anticipated. I have noticed one
encouraging sign. The RotaMax people don't seem to be much on publicity.
I
find this a bit refreshing. They also don't seem to be trying to hustle
stock - refreshing again. As a privately held company, it's difficult to
tell how well they are funded. Trying to focus on industrial applications
to get volume and cash flow going makes sense to me. They are willing to
talk to hovercraft manufacturers. I do know that a NEOVA with one of
their
engines did static trials in Indiana last year. Haven't heard the
results.
Phantom aircraft has talked to them about using one of their engines in
their two-seat ultra-light versus the AIXIRO that had a major failure
after
135 test hours.
The RotaMax's run up at 7750 stock. I don't believe that
RotaMax is going to be in the gearbox business, so everyone gets to figure
out their own drives (like this is new). How many of these engines are
out
there? My understanding was that 200 Bloc I engines were scheduled. I
don't know how many were actually placed as beta models. The Bloc II
engines were intended for June-July of this year. I was told very
recently
that August is more likely. When the specs for the Block II are released
I'll post them on the board.
George W.
This has been festering for years. Production in xxxx. When xxxx comes
along
then
it is production in yyyy. They are taking instructions from Moller.
Moller has been promising a sky car for 30 years.
The memory span of the interested parties is limited and a new sucker is
born every minute.
When I see an airplane flying with
one I will start to believe they are something other than a stock scam.
Then they are going to have to demonstrate at least a 500 hour TBO.
Rotary engines that work are harder to make than they look.
Paul Lamar
While just poking around a bit, looking for more info on the RotaMax
brand, I
found the following site: http://www.rotamax.net/.
There was also a mention of the engine last August on RotaryNew.com
http://rotarynews.com/node/view/667 . That article attributes the engines
to a
company called Thermo Fan, Inc., a privately held firm located in OH. The
piece
goes on to attribute original core engine development to OMC, during the
period
between 1974 - 1984. Thermo Fan apparently started from that OMC base in
its
continued development program. The article explains the basic differences
between Mazda and RotaMax offerings.
Jack Hilditch
It went to Moller first and a friend of mine Jeff Spitzer converted it to
a two rotor
water cooled from a one rotor air cooled OMC.
Don't hold your breath waiting for this engine. The dates on these
pictures
are Mar 2003 or earlier.
--
Paul Lamar ...No rotor no motor.
Just to make things a bit more confusing. I did a search on RotaMax on
google and tried a few ad-ons.
Lo and behold there is a rotary motorcycle site. I assume this is the
hardware someone saw at Osh.
www.rotabike.com
Try the following:
www.rotaryforum.com/forum/showthread.php?p=185095
Scroll way down and their are some some graphics on the Block II rotamax
engines.. They are apparently being marketed for aircraft purposes at:
www.rotaryaircraftengines.com
some first impressions from this site are that RotaMax has teamed with
someone who is running with the aircraft application. All of these engines
have electronic fuel injection. They seem to be marketing the industrial
units as baseline models. Apparently they will be offering belt reductions
and geared PSRU's. Each model is offered with a turbocharger, but if I'm
reading their "specs" correctly, they are using the turbo for power, not
normalization. Apparently they are counting on the electronics of the fuel
injection system to adjust mixture (in autos this might be good to about
10,000 ft agl) The "aircraft" models cite twin plug, twin ignition. The
photos on the site are of what I believe are the 1st generation carb models,
so not very informative. The detailed diagrams click point bring up the old
industrial drawings which also look like 1st generation engine.
My impression is that they have de-rated the block I engines down to 6,000
rpm, possibly reduced weight with a lighter flywheel. There is an
interesting ** behind the weight column which states in the note below
"Weight does not include PSRU, starting, charging, exhaust, cooling, or
other accessory systems". I'm not sure this is all that bad, as some of us
want 12-v and some want 24-v electrical systems. Apparently some of the
gyro boys have been flying with these engines. I do get the impression that
they will be marketing accessories. the columns for the reduction units say
"inquire". There is also a statement at the top of the engine model pages
dated 8/1/2007 stating in part, "Maximum torque starts at 3,000 rpm and
continues through 6,000 rpm. this means that you can get much more thrust
from you prop at lower Horsepower! It is the reason we will be implementing
5 blade props, to capture all the torque, on fixed pitch SLSA engine models,
for example". Hmmmmm.
Seems to me that it is easier to talk about turbo charging a rotary than
actually doing it. I'm not sure why you need a turbo to get 100 hp at 6,000
rpm on a single rotor. Richard Sohn seems pretty close or better right now.
They seem to be targeting the Rotax engines with the single rotor and the
small Continentals and Subaru's with the twin rotor. Apparently their high
end engine is claimed to crank out 180 hp at 6,000 rpm with a turbo and
cruise at 170 hp @ 5,500.
best,
George W.
You guys are giving them way way too much credibility. Until they start demonstrating
some real engines it is all vapor ware. Anybody can say anything. Anybody can make
a bunch of casting and bolt them together to look like a rotary engine. They don't
even need water jackets (core boxes) inside because the causal observer will never know.
The HP numbers are meaningless.
Rotary engines that live a long time are very hard to build and take millions
to develop. Just ask Mistral.
No more on this subject. They don't deserve the publicity.
Paul Lamar
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