That is my concern as well Marv. My goal is to choose a prop which will allow the engine to turn about the same rpm as my old one under cruise conditions but allows me to use the additional power mainly as "afterburner" for racing or increased takeoff performance. I have had very little time to evaluate how close to this goal I came, but first impression is that it's amazingly close (considering how unlikely this sounds for a fixed pitch prop). I'll be doing more testing next week to get some hard numbers. Tracy ----- Original Message ----- From: Marvin Kaye Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2004 10:52 PM To: Rotary motors in aircraft Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: 2.85 redrive All this talk about 2.85 gear boxes, getting higher into the power curve,
improving cliumb performance, etc, is really interesting. Since 3 of my 6
initial reasons for going rotary were reliability, I'm wondering what running
at these higher power levels is going to do in that regard. I'm pretty
convinced that running at 5300-5500 rpms at cruise is a good formula for
having an engine that isn't overtaxed and Tracy's experience has borne this
out. Isn't there any concern out there about increased wear to the rotor
housings, greater potential for catastrophic failure and so on, at these
considerably higher constant power levels? I hate to be a wet blanket, but
what are the real longterm tradeoffs in operating routinely at 15-20% higher
power levels?
<Marv>
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