Delta Hawk Forward Kit Rv 7

[rv7deltalima]

Hi to you all!
Has anybody installed or intend to install an Delta Hawk engine in their RV7?

[Highflight]

I was mentally committed to it for a long time, but now that it's time to actually order an engine, I'm figuring I should have just been "committed", if you know what I mean.

During the last three years, I had been keeping in touch by calling every few months to find out how their progress was going. Other than general availability, I was VERY interested in finding out about FWF issues and repeatedly asked about that.

The short story is that the company has absolutely NO interest in developing aircraft specific FWF engineering and/or parts. They expect that some unknown, un-named company will (magically) do that.
In the mean time, the prices of the engine keep getting hiked up.

While I do understand that these are Experimental aircraft, I am not qualified to engineer and make my own FWF installation so I passed and am going with a tried and true Mattituck IO-360.
In the end, the only two benefits to the DH would be (perhaps) better fuel economy and higher altitudes. Well, JetA is not that cheap anymore compared to Avgas, and I don't anticipate flying oxygen altitudes that often in my RV. Considering the extra time and hassle it would take to install the DH, I decided to pass and join the ranks of 96.5% of RV builders who did the smart thing.

I personally think that the company missed the boat by not developing FWF kits themselves for the more well known kits such as all the RV's, Glasair's and others.
Unless there are FWF "bolt on" parts available at the time you buy a DH, your project has pretty much stopped unless you own a machine shop and a degree in structural engineering and design... and a lot more money.
For my part, I would have gone with the DH if the final installed cost could have been at least in the ballpark of a lyclone or Lycoming, and more importantly, if a real FWF "kit" was available at the same time as the engine... which it's not.