Grimace
Well-Known Member
We all know about feature creep in any design. And "hp creep" (Xhp is good, so X+20hp is better). But for a long time, this little engine had my mental gears turning. 65hp, 100lbs, turbocharged. Aerotwin Motors Corporation
If you designed a tiny little "speedster" for low altitudes and then allowed it to produce its full rated hp (or something close to it) up to 14,000 or 18,000 feet or more... would that be a viable (relatively) high speed X-country airplane? Or are there design tradeoffs between making something so light and optimizing it for high altitude flight (the need for breathing O2, notwithstanding).
The one obvious drawback here is that if this company went belly-up, it seems quite a bit more advanced than anything else in the marketplace, so your design would go along with the fortunes of the experimental engine manufacturer (historically, that's not a good bet). Anyway, it seems like a pretty big step in terms of lbs/hp, at least as far as the slow/cheap/economical end of the spectrum tends to go.
I'm sure some people here can generate some good thoughts on this..
If you designed a tiny little "speedster" for low altitudes and then allowed it to produce its full rated hp (or something close to it) up to 14,000 or 18,000 feet or more... would that be a viable (relatively) high speed X-country airplane? Or are there design tradeoffs between making something so light and optimizing it for high altitude flight (the need for breathing O2, notwithstanding).
The one obvious drawback here is that if this company went belly-up, it seems quite a bit more advanced than anything else in the marketplace, so your design would go along with the fortunes of the experimental engine manufacturer (historically, that's not a good bet). Anyway, it seems like a pretty big step in terms of lbs/hp, at least as far as the slow/cheap/economical end of the spectrum tends to go.
I'm sure some people here can generate some good thoughts on this..