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When will a diesel be available for my aircraft? |
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News, facts, and comments on the coming revolution for piston-engine aircraft.News of April 15, 2006Special Report: Aero diesels at Sun n Fun, April 06.Exhibitors where it was possible to see and discuss aero-diesels were Superior Engines (now part of Thielert), SMA, Diamond Aircraft, and DeltaHawk. We noticed a distinct change this year in the nature of interest. The question is no more whether diesel will come, but exactly when. The level of curiosity and the quality of questions were high. Inquiries of the kind: “When can I buy a diesel airplane? When can I put a diesel in my plane? Where is your local customer service dealer?” were the most common. To these questions, a common answer was: “Be patient, we are working very fast to establish and train our field service resources and do not want to leave future customers hanging around for lack of support.” Thielert offers the 135HP conversion for 172s to fleet operators only, offering possibility to train their own A/P. SMA was demonstrating a beautiful 182 diesel and advertising the first Atlantic crossing with such a plane, around 25 of which are flying worldwide. But SMA is still waiting for the final US STC for this conversion. So the present situation today is you can fly a 182 SMA anywhere in the world as a certified conversion, but can only fly Experimental in the US. SMA was also exhibiting flying photos of the Piper Dakota SMA conversion, said to demonstrate remarkable performances. DeltaHawk was exhibiting the Velocity demo plane they are regularly demonstrating and were the only ones exhibiting graphics showing how dramatically fuel flow is reduced when a diesel airplane flies at “survival speeds” (meaning 1.3 to 1.5 Vsa). posted at 1:07 AM |
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Announcement from SMA aero diesel
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