I would love to work on the turbo compound but it will take big bucks.
Don't get me wrong I am not asking for money nor do I want any.
I am hoping somebody will wake up that can afford it.

Paul Lamar


Paul - How much is big bucks, and what sort of power/fuel
efficiency/time frame would you guestimate?  I'm still a newbie to the
rotary world, but the advantages of the rotary over the recip are pretty
easy to discern. Therefore, I'm awake . . . but do not have the
expertise (and most likely not the resources) to know where to turn
next. Resistance to change and government regulation/certification
issues are certainly problems, and I don't know if I'll live long enough
to work through them, but one has to start somewhere - and you and your
contacts certainly appear to be the place to start.

Nick Jilek

SMC Aviation
www.smcltd.com


The fuel burn would drop about 15% to 20% for the same HP.
Demonstrated by no less than 9,000 R3350TC engines with millions
of flight hours.

Well Mecanair/Mistral has been trying to certify a Mazda copy for
perhaps as long as ten years. They have spent millions and they are
down to the wire. It better happen soon. They cannot afford
to develop rotary turbo compound at this point. They must focus on
certification of what they have and start generating
a cash flow.

Unless some source of big government big bucks shows up to contract
with Mistral to develop rotary turbo compound I can't see that happening there.

The space shuttle program will be over in 16 months. NASA could then do it
but the turbo compound Wankel rotary program has been a start stop operation
with them for years.

http://www.rotaryeng.net/NASA-Paper-turbo-compound-rotary.pdf

See APPENDIX C:  TURBOMACHINERY SYSTEM ANALYSIS FOR
                STRATIFIED CHARGE ROTARY ENGINE

AKA turbo compound but really nothing to do with stratified charge.
Naming the appendix TURBOMACHINERY screwed up the internet search engines for
the next twenty years. I happened to find it only by chance.
NASA never funded the test hardware despite the highly positive results of the
study. Mostly because John Deere decided to get out of the program I suspect.

The current US government does not have the money to fund what they
see as private aviation for rich folks only. They would just as soon
see it go away or tax it out of existence  like what is done
in Europe. Perhaps AOPA or EAA could take up the cause of general aviation
and fund some R&D. I would gladly pay more dues if they were doing that.
I can't get the EAA to even publish an article on the subject of TC.
The people running the EAA magazine have no vision or technical
education. Kitplanes said they were publishing my TC article but I have
not seen it yet.

There is some TC potential in cars but I don't see any car companies that can
afford the R&D expenditure right now. They are all just trying to stay alive.
Maybe Mazda will see the light.

In the mean time I have come up with a baby step and that is to use
one or more small model airplane type props as a dyno to measure the excess
HP out of a turbocharger. That data may then be used as factual evidence to convince
some one with the big bucks. The trick is to measure the torsional
deflection of a shaft connecting the compressor section and the
small prop load/power consumer.

Paul Lamar