Mistral Rotary
 

Offhanded comments made by some in other threads moved me to make comment about the status of Mistral.
Mistral is flying it's own Piper Arrow with their 230 HP turbocharged rotary engine. This aircraft has been flying for a little over a year with great success, no engine failures, and is going to be used for the certification flying. Yes this engine is going to be certified, and I believe will be successful. The HP to weight ratios of all the proposed engines are higher than a compareable Lyc, which is no suprise, that is a strength of the rotary. Fuel burn has been competitive on both their 190 HP O/IO 360 replacement motor, and the 230 HP turbo, a bigger suprise as the rotary has a (incorrect) reputation as a fuel guzzler. Mistral is also developing a Jet-A burning SPARK IGNITION HEAVY FUEL engine. This engine is running NOW and producing good numbers.
This is a major effort to produce a reliable alternate aircraft engine. The engines are not vaporware and are becoming available for purchase. No customer aircraft yet, although that isn't supprising since the engines have only been available for approximatly 7 months. I am providing this as an FYI in the alrternate engines section.
Bill Jepson
Rotary10-RV

thanks bill. i've been watching their site to check for updates as well. do you know anything about steve thomas, and his mistral glasair install?

Bill, given much thought to rads and ducting on your 20B installation yet? I'm starting to install my custom built rad and belly scoop now. Impressed with the rad which uses a Visteon type core (can't reveal the source or I will be killed). On my flow bench, it had 1/4 the pressure drop of the commonly used GM/ Harrison evaporator cores so I'm hoping that with my adjustable exit door, the drag penalty will be minimal. I spent hours looking at various under cowl rad setups but space, ducting and or poor flow settled me on the belly scoop. Some flow testing indicated that air from the cowling exit duct would turn the corner into the belly scoop inlet so I had to solve this by fitting a horizontal splitter between the two. Messing up Van's clean design by putting a car engine in it. It will be unique though. :)

I'll be interested to see how Eggenfellner's supercharged 3L Subes perform and cool in the -10 with the cheek mounted rads.

Just be realistic
 

Bill those where no doubt my off handed comments. I did make the comment that there is not performance data in 2 years of "flight test" and that I did not think this would ever come to the market (or at least sell many).

Let me ask you this, why would some one buy an engine for $31,000 with out an installation kit or prop. No doubt if installed In a certified aircraft, an installation kit is needed (because the installation must be certified), and no doubt that installation kit would cost say wild guess $10,000. OK. Now what do you get over the IO-360 lycoming that was in there? Faster? Lighter? Better fuel economy? I doubt they have achieved any break though in any area and find it suspicious that they don't publish real performance, fuel and weights after almost 2 years of flying. I would be wrong, please correct me.

I doubt they will sell many to the certified crowd at those prices and think Power Sport rotary kit is a more attractive set up tailored for the experimental RV'er market. Than there is the roll your own Real World solutions path to a home grown rotary setup, which is by far the most cost effective way to a rotary engine.

As far as the experimental group. If you can go the Real World solution and do a do-it-yourself rotary for say $12,000 to $16,000 are you going to pay just $31,000. I am sure it is great stuff but we have to temper our enthusiasm for reality an VALUE / bang for the bucks.

I noticed the only "customer picture" is a Glasair under construction. I also noticed they have reduced the price! So one Piper flying some where for some unknown hours and one hanger project? I would NOT send my money in, today, 7 months from now or 2 years from now or ever unless they can show some real performance and specs independently verified. I just hate to see fellow RV'ers loose money. Mistral market and customer base seems to be muddled. They came out aiming at the certified market? They are dedicated to the experimental market? Prices are reduced? There just seems to me a little shakiness to it all. Check out Power Sport first. They are proven in RV's and have known specs, performance and was tested in the RVator in the last year or so.

I hope the reduction drive turns out to be a great thing. I think you asked or someone asked and they want $6000-$7000 for the drive? That kind of takes the price advantage out of the rotary, when a new C/S prop direct drive Lycoming cost less than $20,000.


I hate to be the pisser in the group but someone has to temper unbridled enthusiasm. NO WHERE DID I SAY IT WAS BAD, and I only experessend my personal OPINION, based on seeing dozens of these NEW and improved engines not make an impact, at least at those prices. I suspect they want to charge certitifed approved aircraft engine prices and want the experimental guys to pay it and do their flight test. I just don't think that is going to happen. I could be wrong. At the rate they are going I doubt you will see much progress and it will fade away when their money runs out and there is not enough "deposits" coming in. There is a reason the Lycoming's are still being made after 50 years by three manufactures. George

rv10 mistral
 

I think the first rotary RV-10 will be danish,the airplane is almost ready and
engine delivery should be soon it will hopefully fly in a few months,you can follow the progress on their homesite www.rv10.dk

j?rn m?ller

Powersport's website is defunct and with the loss of one of the RV8s last year, there appears to be now more news. A shame as this one was well engineered IMHO.

Powersport's site is back up though they continue to be hanging on by their fingernails. The plane (Jim Clark's) that went down had an electrical failure not engine. Sad as it is a well concieved package.
Bill Jepson

[quote=gmcjetpilot]Bill those where no doubt my off handed comments. I did make the comment that there is not performance data in 2 years of "flight test" and that I did not think this would ever come to the market (or at least sell many).

I doubt they will sell many to the certified crowd at those prices and think Power Sport rotary kit is a more attractive set up tailored for the experimental RV'er market. Than there is the roll your own Real World solutions path to a home grown rotary setup, which is by far the most cost effective way to a rotary engine.

As far as the experimental group. If you can go the Real World solution and do a do-it-yourself rotary for say $12,000 to $16,000 are you going to pay just $31,000. I am sure it is great stuff but we have to temper our enthusiasm for reality an VALUE / bang for the bucks.


George,
I really wonder what your problem is? You obviously won't want one, but many people will. The Mistral package is well thought out and mounts to a standard Dynafocal mount, so you could do an install on any thing using one without tremendous changes. There is test data shown on the site. It isn't hidden, though you may have to use the site map to locate it. They will sell you a engine NOW with a REAL delivery date. I made mention of this because the comments were made in a thread about Inodyne which may never deliver anything. Mistral isn't doing the please send us a deposit for a product that may never be delivered. Any comment to that end is simply malicious and without foundation. On several of the Rotary based discussion groups they have been posting results of their normally aspirated 190 HP engine tests regularly. They are running dyno tests almost every day and have hundreds of hours on the Arrow. The Jet-A engine may be of more interest to their customers in europe, but it is running. Paul Lamar who runs the Aircraft Rotary Engine Newsletter has visited the factory which is anything but vaporware. The Mistral PSRU is designed for Hyd/CS from the start which is why I'm interested in it. I consider it to be EXCELLENT value for a new product, which is why I may use it in my aircraft. Tracy Crook offers a different type of product and MANY people are interested in both. Tracy offers an even BETTER value it just depends on what you want to do. I know you prefer Lyc George. Most people who read any of your posts probably think you're on their payroll. Great that is your preference, don't expect everyone else to follow suit. BTW Powersports PSRU costs 6-7000 dollars if you can buy one, just for reference. I think the layout was fine and in fact have comunicated repeatedly with the designer of the reduction drive. The Powersport package costs almost the same price as the Mistral package installed. A new Mistral 230 HP engine still costs less than a O-540 from Vans if I was to buy both new. The O-540 on Vans site with his discount is $37,500.00, The IO-540 is $42,000. That is a bare engine without an "install kit." You can and may very well do better, but many pony up for a new engine from Vans. They could do the same for less from Mistral and have to do some development fitting the Radiators and oil cooler, that is the big difference.
Bill Jepson

I have given a great deal of thought on the radiator location on the 10. Send me a private message with your e-mail and I'll send you a layout I've been working on. For everone else's benefit, I plan to use 2 radiators near the firewall on both sides. The possibilities are ducting for a wedge entry with the radiator exhaust exiting near the firewall but the radiator facing almost directly at the rear edge of the engine with the exit being the standard location with a cowl flap. The other possibility is about 180? reversed with a side exit near the bottom of the cowl side. I call this layoout the "gill" exit for obvious reasons. For oil cooler/s I may use a Fluidyne rad/oil combo on both sides or run the rads in series with on smaller to stack with the oil cooler.
Cheers,
Bill Jepson
Rotary10-RV

Mistral rotary
 

These Mistral guys are about an hour from my house down the road in Geneva. If someone is really interested, I could swing down there and take some pictures of what they are up to. I've never visited their shop, so I have no idea what to expect.