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  One smaller turbocharged engine that's already planned for the ES one of
these days is Continental's GAP engine.  It'll be a 4 cylinder, water
cooled, turbocharged, Jet A fed diesel, but it's only rated at about 200 hp.
I'm sure a lot of readers may have seen the mockup of this installation at
Oshkosh, AOPA or other big shows in the last couple of years.  The engine is
supposed to be flying at Oshkosh this summer installed as the front engine
on a Skymaster with an IO-360 in back.  (How's that for confidence in your
product?)
  Somewhere in between the GAP engine and the TSIO-550, there must be a few
good candidates in the 250-300 hp range, I'd imagine it's just a matter of
fit.  I know there are a few Lycoming TIO-540 models in this range, but
Brent Regan tells me that fitting a turbo'd 540 in within the 4 seat Lancair
cowlings is tough without the extensive installation mod he did for his IV-P
(any comments here, Brent?).  Unfortunately, that mod is not currently
available.  Maybe someone more familiar with Continentals could add a couple
of candidates from their list.
  I'm having a new mount made for my normally aspirated IO-540, but I don't
know if there's room to squeeze in a turbocharger or not.  I'm sure for
enough money, someone could figure out a way to put a couple of small
RayJay's in there to turbo normalize it.  I believe this is just what
Lancair did with the factory Super ES.  I saw it up in Redmond, but the
whole thing was quickly scrapped with little fanfare.  Don't know what the
reason was, but it may have been deemed too expensive to be practical.
Maybe someone with knowledge of this project could comment on it.
  Skip Slater

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