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I work on UAV stuff for the Navy. Heavy fuel engines have been the holy grail for 20 years - and nobody has gotten there yet. Reasons for the demand are primarily logistics - dont want to support multiple fuels in the field, but many of the developers are getting really good BSFC numbers. As you might guess, flight endurance is the "other" holy grail and some of these engines have shown really good BSFC. But nobody has yet gotten the reliability/weight/complexity issues figured out.
There's been some work with rotary heavy fuel engines. Not my field so dont know a lot about whats been done. The Army's Shadow UAV is rotary powered (but gasoline fueled). The company that builds the engine for Shadow (cant remember the name) had a heavy fuel rotary on display at AUVSI (big trade show for unmanned stuff) last year. It was pretty slick but not ready for prime time.
Mike Wills
RV-4 N144MW
----- Original Message ----- From: "Dale Rogers" <dale.r@cox.net>
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 10:01 AM
Subject: [FlyRotary] Heavy Fuel?
Hi all,
I just read a somewhat interesting article in the new EAA
electronic magazine, < http://eaa.org/experimenter/issues/ >.
http://www.eaa.org/experimenter/articles/2009-01_engine.asp
IIRC, the rotary has a bit of a reputation for being able to
run on darned near anything that will burn (100 proof?).
With direct injection - just after the intake ports are
obscured - a realistic possibility, I wonder if the 13B
couldn't be a star platform for a heavy fuel solution.
Hmm, I've got an extra engine, and if I can ever get the
"fly" engine on the airplane ... nah, just another distraction
to keep me from finishing the COZY. After that?
Dale R.
COZY MkIV #0497
Ch. 12 complete. ~still~ on Ch. 13 :(
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