> Paul, best to you and Robin for the holidays and New Year.
     > Thanks again for all your  work to provide the rotary
     > engine faithful such
     > wonderful information resources for further development efforts.
     >
     > In your comprehensive files you probably have the following
     > reference but I
     > keep forgetting to ask you if you have the British Mallard
     > Press's aviation
     > reference book with it's narrative and nice summary
     > illustrations/schematicsof the Wright Turbo Compound family of
     > engines.  Everett and I got it when
     > researching possible ways of recovering the large amount of
     > energy of the
     > Wankel going out the exhaust.  The book's short section on
     > the turbo
     > compound engines also includes a reference to subsequent British
     > work where
     > their engineers concluded: "the future lay in compound power
     > plants." leading
     > to engineers to consider a different type of compounding (than
     > the Wright)
     > which led to the Napier Nomad in 1950-57 where a 12 cylinder
     > diesel was used
     > to drive an axial turbo shaft united geared to the diesel with a
     > variable-ratio coupling with objective of lowest possible fuel
     > consumption."It  notes those promising development efforts
     > were "... swept away by the
     > rising tide of gas-turbines."
     >
     > We also looked at non-compounded alternatives including the
     > book's summary
     > review of the German aviation diesel designs.  It has a
     > cutaway illustration
     > of the 2-cycle Junkers/Jumo aviation diesel, and notes a version
     > of this
     > engine had the best SFC of any WWII engine @ .35.  As with
     > the rotary, it
     > opened and closed ports with the driven component...no valve train.
     > Evidently this engine allowed them during the war to fly a large
     > aircraftnon-stop to New York and back to evaluate possible
     > bombing options.  Our
     > earliest rotary work was with a rotary diesel but we abandoned
     > it for many
     > reasons including those you have noted regarding diesels.
     >
     > Sure hope you can motivate an individual or group with requisite
     > resources(tough in the current economic climate) to pursue the
     > rotary turbo
     > compound concept while we all continue more low cost development
     > work to get
     > the best possible efficiencies using the basic homogeneous
     > charge Mazda.  In
     > this regard, last night I went back and looked at our file notes of
     > comparative flight test results in the 90's.  This was
     > partially driven by
     > consternation  resulting from the findings of the rotary v.
     > recip flyoff
     > written up last year by my friend Ken Scott at Van's, where the
     > results show
     > the rotary powered RV-8's burning much more fuel than the
     > Lycoming powered
     > aircraft. Part of this may be attributable to test methodology
     > and part due
     > to limits of the the single lever fuel systems used on the
     > rotaries.  With
     > our earlier mechanical fuel injection systems on the same basic
     > configuration engines, with proper leaning and only fundamental
     > attention to
     > cooling drag/installation issues which were never refined due to
   time
     > constraints, our rotary engined aircraft in the same model
     > aircraft would
     > consistently fly the identical mission on less fuel than a air
     > cooled recip,
     > even though the modified Mazda rotary engines had a higher
     > SFC.    Your
     > postings of the Mazda technical papers shows their efforts to
     > reconfigurethe ports reduce overlap has substantively improved
     > SFC with the Renesis
     > engines....8 to15 percent as I remember.  Anybody who has
     > done development
     > work knows that SFC gains of this magnitude are significant to
     > say the
     > least.  Has anybody in the group conducted flight tests
     > using an essentially
     > stock Mazda Renesis engine configuration with stock
     > porting?....using engine
     > power settings for extended cruise power settings, and if so
     > results?  I
     > apologize if this is an old subject for your group and the
     > subject of prior
     > review and discussion.
     >
     > Paul, thanks again for all your great work.
     >
     > Steve Beckham.
     >
     > That is one book I don't have but I wish I did.
     > Here are a few shots of the Napier Nomad.
     >
     > Paul Lamar
     >
     >

   Hi Steve Beckham,

   I wish to salute your contribution to this newsletter, Sir.  Thank you.

   Marc Josepn

Yes

Thanks very much Steve Beckham.
Have really appreciated your contribution.

Steve Izett
Perth WA
Renesis Glasair SIIRG