SDS EFI History in Aircraft

In another fuel injection thread today, it was opined that EFI was something a bit new in Experimental aircraft. For those who may be interested, our aviation involvement began in back in late 1995 on these two aircraft designed by Dennis Wiley who also flew them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Bird_Jenny
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Bird_Spad_13

Using Suzuki 3 and 4 cylinder engines, these accumulated over 800 flight hours last we heard and the original Jenny was still flying as of 2014 I believe, using the original EM-1 system.

Around a year later, SDS EFI was installed on Mark Snow's C-85 powered Dragonfly and flew over 600 hours last we heard:

http://www.quickheads.com/images/DBFN_Archive/DBFN_076.pdf

In the late '90s to 2000 period, SDS customers flew integrated fuel and spark systems on both Continental O-200 and Lycoming O-320 engines:

http://www.sdsefi.com/air28.htm

http://www.sdsefi.com/air39.htm

To date, we've supplied over 1700 aviation ECUs, spread between more than 30 different engine types. These have accumulated an estimated 475,000 flight hours to date with 3 of the highest time individual aircraft having over 1500 EFI flight hours each on them. About 85% of our aviation sales today are integrated EFI and electronic ignition types although we still supply numerous EFI-only setups for Jabiru and Rotax 912 engines.

In 2010, SDS became the first EFI system to win Sport Class gold at the Reno air races- perhaps one of the most punishing aviation environments.

As you can see, EFI is hardly new and hardly unproven in Experimental aircraft. Today, we're supplying hundreds of ECUs and complete systems per year as the advantages of EFI and EI become more evident to new users every day. Of course, the EM-5 based systems sold today have many more capabilities and refinements compared to the first EM-1 systems of 1995 and we add more capabilities every year based on customer feedback.

I was one of Dennis Wiley's Early Bird builders, so I've been reading, trading notes, and sometimes debating with Ross for about two decades. Long as I can remember, the SDS website has always displayed a "No Bull***t" symbol....and in my experience, it's true. Pride in product never boils over into unrealistic claims, or the creation of unrealistic expectations.

Enough said.

I appreciate the comment Dan. We've had our good times and bad times in this industry as the fuel injection world changes with new competitors and new technology, often wiping out what was once a lucrative market.

If you don't change and try to look ahead, you can find yourself in a place like Nokia did after the iPhone was introduced- going from hero to zero in a few short years. We were there and had 10 years of hurt from 2005 to 2015. Just gotta never give up and keep using the old noggin, learning new things and hopefully apply those things in the right direction.

Hi Ross,

Are the injectors shown on your pic below Siemens 650cc?

Correct, however most systems we sell now use a different injector with a narrower spray pattern, compatible with the thread-in injector mounts. They also have a stainless steel body. These Siemens injectors cannot be used with the thread-in mounts.

We use several different injector types, spray patterns and flow rates depending on mounting boss type, engine displacement and hp levels.

Thanks again.

Does one typically use a low or high impedance injector with the EM-5 or is it application specific?

Regards,

Quentin

The world pretty much switched over to high impedance injectors over 20 years ago. We rarely ever use low impedance injectors in aviation applications unless they were OEM on some older automotive engine conversions.

Thanks, wasn't aware the world have moved on, my experience is with high rpm boosted applications with selectable drivers, we'd almost universally opt for low but been away from that for a while.

Most of the modern high impedance injectors have response times close to older low impedance types. This is of little concern when using "normal sized" injectors as is usually the case on stock low output engines used in aircraft.

Even on the Sport Class racers where power is approaching 1000hp now, we can still use high impedance injectors and have excellent idle quality. Choices of high impedance ones outnumber low impedance ones by at least 4 to 1 these days.