The side ports are a compromise to allow good power and low end torque.
Aircraft wise I am going to be looking to buy or build 3 PP housings for my 20B.
Much simpler manifolding, (3 pipes instead of 6) and better power at
typical RPMs. I would like to limit my engine to 7000 if I can to reduce wear if
nothing else.
Hi
Bill,
I hear what
you're saying, and you won't have to search the archives too hard to find
some of my old posts in favor of PP. I can almost guarantee that
I'll even try it at some point. Every time I've been really ready to
commit, I've ended up talking to people like Racing Beat, or Leon who
have advised strongly against it for aircraft use. I believe I had that
same conversation with Bruce once as well. Maybe someone can ask him
again. While Lynn seems to love PP for racing, I'm not
sure I've seen him state that he thinks it's the best way to go for
aircraft. How about it Lynn, for, or against PP for aircraft
use?
While the power
is appealing, it just sounds like there are lots of potential issues that make
it less appealing for aircraft use, and we won't really know how it's going
to work out until we have someone flying one. Now I could probably
tolerate the problems in the RV-3, because it's a toy, but if I were sinking
loads of money in a serious cross country machine, expecting good cruise
economy, noise levels, and power, I'd be steering toward a known
solution. Without having personal experience with PP engines, it
would seem foolish to bet the farm against the opinion of the folks who are
truly experts.
As I've
stated many times, I want to believe it will work well, but years go by,
and no one is doing it yet. I really do love the experiments that are in
the works, and I want to see them succeed, but until they do, I just want to
make sure folks know that this is a couple steps closer to the edge of
experimental. If that's what you want, great. If you want something
a bit closer to a sure thing, pay close attention to the way Tracy does
things.
For goodness
sakes, if Ed offers you a really good deal on a "slightly used" engine, with a
self pressurizing cooling system, just say no thanks
:-)
Cheers,
Rusty (wishing Ed
a safe trip home)