I attended a talk about this very topic over the weekend. The presenters started off with a lot of great ideas (their product is in development), and decent stats.
Designed for 'low and slow', < 25000ft, < 250kts
Bypass Ratio of 7, fuel consumption was about 40 gal/hr for 500ish pounds of thrust.
FADEC controls, integrated starter/generator, all electric pumps, 5 hour strip down time.
Turbine is a non-cooled blisk.
Fan is an aluminum blisk.
So, all this sounded great, then things started to fall apart in the second half.
Combustion chamber takes 18 months to make (or for them to get the turn around on one unit), to me thats a red flag, any single part that is that complex must be stupid expensive, or they need to find another supplier.
Certification won't be ready until 2015 at the earliest.
Cost: US$250,000 , and they expect people to buy two. Really? For $500,000 I can get a used King Air, *today*. Even some Lears and other 80's era jets are in this price range nowadays.
I really don't see where this engine fits in. I'm grateful they revealed their stats, (just try to find stats or costs on a PW610 or Williams FJ-33), but this is still way out of the range of 'general aviation'.
Granted, these guys aren't Innodyn (who imploded without ever delivering anything and made promises they couldn't keep), and they were rather humble, and made no real claims to anything. Everything was an estimate.
GA really does need an affordable turbine, and by affordable, that means "the price of a nice car", not 'the price of a mansion'.
A new O-360 runs at around $50,000, (most of which probably goes to pay lawyers and paperwork), and people do buy these, so lets stay that's affordable.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but with CFD and simulator power available, wouldn't starting a new engine (or taking a APU design and adapting it), be 'relatively' easy? Fabrication has come a long way, parts can be milled on a 6-axis mill, Sintered with lasers, and so on. Turbines also have fewer parts, so it should be less to certify, if one is going that route.
Still incredibly disappointed this hasn't happened, is there not really a market? is it actually way more harder to make an engine than I realize?
One of these days I'd certainly like to try.
