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turbine powered RV? Where is it now?

R

ron sterba

Well Known Member
About four years ago I heard of a company getting ready to offer a turbine for RVs. They had a prototype flying and you could go to their website to see it in action. Does anybody know if this materialized? Ron
 
I believe you are referring to Innodyn. They gave me a tour of their facility some years ago and they appeared to know what they were doing. The company was run by the folks at Nearhoof Machine in central PA. You might be able to track them down for more details.
 
Innodyn

A real shame the Innodyn project was lost. It was a fascinating project, and gave builders some real hope of someday having an affordable light turbine available if they so wished. It was enormously expensive to develop, and still had some engineering hurdles to clear, but none the less, very impressive. I have often wondered if an interested engineering group would continue the project. I sure hope so.....

Regards,
Chris
 
It's in Colorado...

...mounted on an -8. The owner was pretty fed up with it, as I recall and it has probably been replaced with a Lyc....as usual.

Best,
 
The owner of Turbine Cubs now Backcountry Super Cubs bought Smith Cub and Inodyne Turbine with the idea of producing a Turbine Cub kit. Bruce is an oilman and paid way too much for both companies. He soon found out Inodyne was a pipe dream after investing a ton of money buying the company. It is officially dead never to rise again. The Cub kits he does are about the best on the market. I have one just about finished. Really nice parts, horrible instructions. Unlike Vans instruction manual a first time airplane builder won't be able to build it without a lot of experienced assistance. Don
 
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thanks David on Innodyn. Thanks to all for their info. I'll have to check on it. Ok I googled Innodyn and there are pictures of it at Oshkosh 2005/2006 and several other sites about the turbine. It did mention the RV4 had the turbine in and flying. I wonder where that RV4 is now? I heard there was a RV7 being built with one of those turbines down TEXAS way. Anybody have pics or the orginal video of the RV4 flying in the demo video from Innodyn? Thanks Ron
 
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Innodyne is defunct, as many predicted.

However, there now appears to be a real turbine engine on the market, with a turboprop to follow shortly, both based on the same microturbine engine.

PBS Velka Bites numbers seem to vary, but prediction seems to be around 250hp equivalent for the turboprop model.

Before you get excited, I did my best to translate their fuel consumption based on the microjet (since fuel burn should run around the same). Someone feel free to check my math - I could not find a direct conversion of their Physics terms into hp - but what I ended up with was over 40 gph at full power. That would be 20 gph @ 16,500' for about 125hp. Pretty inefficient, but sure to impress your friends!
 
I rememeber following Innodyn and their progress closely about 6-7 years ago. Sad to see it fall on it's face, seemed to be very promising.
 
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