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Deltahawk

With the turbocharging lending a good horsepower ratio at altitude, it would make a good cross-country engine, but you would need an RV-14 to come close to being able to carry that weight, and you'd be fighting a nose-heavy tendency during the whole build while deciding where to mount equipment. You're right, still too small for a -10.

No mention of price, or airframes - but they will provide (according to the website) a full package including engine, mount, radiator, intercooler, and prop.
 
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Last I recall some years back, they were asking in the vicinity of $60K

Now it only mentions a deposit.

Anyone know the projected final cost?
 
Me thinks

Me thinks therefore I am…

It seems awful heavy for a 180 hp. Does anyone know how this compares to a Lycoming?

But I guess if you are in parts of the world with only Jet A or diesel, it is a good engine.

But then again, if there are toyota corrolas around, then autogas would be available too!
 
PilotjohnS said:
Me thinks therefore I am…

It seems awful heavy for a 180 hp. Does anyone know how this compares to a Lycoming?
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a 180 hp Lycoming weighs about 280-ish, depending on which one.

I don't know about physical size or if their published weight includes the cooling system etc, but with their weight as posted, you could easily cram this into a RV7 if you went with a composite prop. It wouldn't be any heavier that a 200hp with a Hartzell constant speed.

You'd have to accept the fact that it would be climbing slower than everybody else's RV, but it would really shine when you got to altitude and were cruising at RV speeds on 40% less gas.

Having said all that, I went with a Lycoming, and if I were starting to build today I'd still go with a Lycoming. I'd like to get this thing done sometime this decade, not still be tinkering with a new engine install when I'm 90.
 
It really would shine at altitude for cruise - but it's just too much weight for 9, it needs a 14, and even then you would have to carefully move stuff aft (remote mount avionics, batteries, etc) to counter the extra weight up front.

Their site lists the all-up equipment weight as 357 pounds, including radiator and intercooler, starter, turbo, exhaust, alternator, NOT including fluids or engine mount, and we have no idea what the cowl will look like for the cooling air required. It would be nice to have the engine coolant stream available for cockpit heat though...

There is a note about higher power versions in development, perhaps one day they can get into the range where it would make sense for a 10. I already have a 540 core for build-up.
 
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I want this, or one of these to work. I could go into a lot of detail but this dead horse has been beaten plenty. There's just no real business case for the vast, vast majority of the market. The chances of ending up with an orphan PP are high.

Still cheering for a market disrupter to succeed just not feeling it on this product.
 
I still have the Delta Hawk T shirt from 1999 when I engaged them for this engine on my first build.

If I was to venture a guess, pricing will be well north of $80K.

Carl
 
It wasn’t that long ago that I was really cheering for a JetA burning recip of some kind (Diesel, obviously) - but that was when I was paying two dollars a gallon less for JetA than for Avgas. Now it’s reversed - JetA is about a dollar more per gallon than Avgas in our area, so even the illusory economics of saying I would save money burning kerosene is gone….

Previous contacts with Deltahawk left me feeling that they weren’t going to sell to a homebuilder anyway….but maybe management has changed its tune…or not….
 
Once upon a time DH was listing the BSFC of this engine at .37 so little better than a 9 to 1 Lyc with injection and EI running LOP in cruise.

With not much difference in fuel costs presently between Jet A and 100LL, seems hard to justify the likely $80K+ cost in North America. It would take decades for the average flyer to recover the costs, assuming it's as reliable as a typical Lycoming.
 
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One small blurb on their website mentions $80M (yes, million) in development costs. Even spread over 1000 engines that is $80,000 each engine just for paying off the development cost - PLUS actual manufacturing, and then profit margin. If this is targeted at gov't drone-type aircraft, maybe those numbers make sense. But for GA?

I'm not hopeful.
 
Weight

PilotjohnS said:
Me thinks therefore I am…

It seems awful heavy for a 180 hp. Does anyone know how this compares to a Lycoming?

But I guess if you are in parts of the world with only Jet A or diesel, it is a good engine.

But then again, if there are toyota corrolas around, then autogas would be available too!
Click to expand...

Turbo and supercharged or not, it also seems quite heavy for a 2-Cycle engine!

Skylor
 
A prop on a diesel will need to be well thought out and tested. It will probably alomst certainly be composite. Wood core like MT maybe? Power Pulses are usually stronger and so resonance frequency issues often arise with diesels. I wonder if 2 cycle engines are better or worse...I suspect better than a 4 cycle diesel.

Wide areas outside USA don't have 100LL fuel. This is where the engine could find wide appeal. Africa, Asia, maybe South America.

Ballast in the tail could fix the weight and balance issue with the heavier engine.
 
Bcone1381 said:
A prop on a diesel will need to be well thought out and tested. It will probably alomst certainly be composite. Wood core like MT maybe? Power Pulses are usually stronger and so resonance frequency issues often arise with diesels. I wonder if 2 cycle engines are better or worse...I suspect better than a 4 cycle diesel.

Wide areas outside USA don't have 100LL fuel. This is where the engine could find wide appeal. Africa, Asia, maybe South America.

Ballast in the tail could fix the weight and balance issue with the heavier engine.
Click to expand...

Resonances can be tuned away from operating regimes. The torsional vibes are the big design consideration.

When a product is introduced to a market and it doesn't do anything better, nor is it cheaper than existing products, what is its real market potential?

Any gains are very limited. The integration complexity and related time are greatly increased. Variable Operating cost are essentially equal. Fixed cost are higher and the risks are vastly increased.

I wish them well but a swing and a miss per all the known variables.
 
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