Hi Paul, I've got 2 questions, or rather two things that are confusing to
me.
1) I have entertained thoughts of a "spark plugs up" installation as well.
For design reasons, I like the idea of the exhaust going straight down and
out. I also like the idea of any fuel leak in the intake NOT following laws
of gravity and dripping straight onto a super-hot exhaust. The guys at
flyrotary.com seem to have made this idea into fact, and quite a few have a
"plugs-up" installation. They even have a sort of show & tell web page about it,
but they are not being fanatical about it, and seemed to have taken the
trouble to remain reasonable. Now, I have learned to trust your judgement and
expertise, and if I listen to you, all these guys have plugs-up rotary
installations that are accidents waiting to happen. But I sure hate to pass up the
design convenience. Discourage me some more, OR think about it some more and
brain-storm up required things to make it work, if you would. I can send you
a copy of the plugs-up writings for you to evaluate. However, in the end, I
will listen to you......
2) The inverted flight question and needing a dry sump setup. I looked at
the pictures of the cut-away housings, and all I can think of is that there
is a lot of room for oil to collect when you are upside down, before there
are any opportunities to scavenge it into a dry sump. There seem to be no
specific "holes" that could be used to collect and feed oil into a dry sump
without a lot of it sloshing around anyways inside the housings. How do piston
engines do it? In their case, all that loose oil will drop into these madly
reciprocating cups (i.e. upside down pistons) and be flung around, and
repeating that so many thousands of times per minute. That appears even more
critical than what you would see when looking up inside a rotary oil pan with
the engine going.
Both questions 1) and 2) also kind of relate to each other, don't they?
I believe that you spend a lot of time and effort on all of us, time that
is taking a lot away from your own needs. If we stop and consider it all, we
would admit how much we treasure you. Thank you!
Bernie
I would never say they are an accident waiting to happen but of the two
or three that have flown including Lou Ross's Mooney airplane only Ed Anderson is
still flying as far as I know. Of the pictures of airplanes on the fly rotary
web site only one is plugs up other than Ed's and as far as I know that
aircraft has had a Lycoming or not flown for at least 7 or 8 years.
It is a testament to the toughness of the Mazda rotary engine to mis treat
it like that and have it still live :) Try running a piston engine on its
side when it was designed to run upright and see what happens.
The guy that makes the most noise about it never got his airplane to cool.
He completely gave up on the rotary and sold it. He still maintains the plugs
up web site just to piss me off I think. I gave him some good cooling advice
which he ignored and then failed with his own half backed cooling ideas and he
has never forgiven me for being right :) I still have all his emails to me.
You won't see these pictures of his airplane on the plugs up web site :)
I'll say it again. Why would anybody in his right mind run the engine plugs up?
That indicates to me a lack of understanding on how the Wankel engine works
and the process an engineer goes through to design an engine. These people
are dismissive of engineers and are clueless about engineering
in general. They derisively refer to engineers as "Experts". My guess is
they failed algebra in high school :)
Specifically how the rotor cooling works. It is not like Mazda kept a big deep dark
secrete about it. Kenishi Yamoto explained it in his 1969 book "Rotary Engine" which
obviously certain people did not read or did not have the mental where with all to
understand :) It is available on the web for free download.
http://foxed.ca/foxed/index.php?page=rx7manual
Now.... do you really want to know how I feel about the subject? :)
Thank you Bernie for the complement.
Paul Lamar
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