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DeltaHawk may happen after all... (June 2015)

Same here. The promise of these new engines are really intriguing but they do have to be built and sold at a competitive price first!
 
KEY word....Price! what was it, 65K or so?

Last time they had any real data on the website, yes. Now with the new company the site has been scrubbed of all meaningful data, I'm assuming they are re-evaluating the product and the market.
 
Well they're on the exhibitor list, booth 177, Main Display, so there ought to be a fair amount of promises to be had this year......I expect Paul Bertorelli'll be all over it for those of us not there.
 
I'm local to the Deltahawk operation and our EAA Chapter toured their facility in 2001. The engine looked promising back then, but I don't think they have figured out how to invert the V configuration of the cylinders, thus the crank shaft is low and cylinders high. In the past they've said that they only provide an engine, how it is attached to the plane is the owners problem, including engine mount. How experimental do you want to be?
 
Does anyone have real experience with this engine? What is the durability? And TBO?

Interesting that googling deltahawk gets a comparison chart for RV's.
 
I'm holding out a whole lot more hope for the Del-120 unit given that its already pulling duty with Uncle Sam.....
 
I'm holding out a whole lot more hope for the Del-120 unit given that its already pulling duty with Uncle Sam.....

I think it's a tad heavy for a 2 seat RV. I think I saw 360lbs as the listed weight. Could be wrong. Haven't looked into it that much.
 
I think it's a tad heavy for a 2 seat RV. I think I saw 360lbs as the listed weight. Could be wrong. Haven't looked into it that much.

Looks like about the spread of a fancy interior & showplane paint job, or if you believe diesels are more efficient, about the spread in fuel weight for the same range....

IO-360-A 8.70:1 200 2,700 2,000 19.35 34.25 29.81-31.33 wt: 324-335

http://www.lycoming.com/Lycoming/PRODUCTS/Engines/Certified/360Series/EngineData.aspx

Not that there's any hope I could afford one, even if they do go into production.

Charlie
 
I want one really badly.... but I'm skeptical of them coming anywhere near a Lycoming price point.
 
Thats a beautiful experimental $100K engine with a $35K prop on it....does it come with a free airplane attached?
 
It's not clear how they are supporting the turbo in the video. I hope it's not just hanging off the exhaust system like it appears here.

40% lower fuel flow? Is that at full power or cruise? That would be a BSFC of around .25 comparing to a Lyc running LOP in cruise. 2 stroke diesels are lucky to be much below .38.
 
I traded a few emails with a Deltahawk media representative before OSH. At that time there were no plans to sell to the EAB market, which is why it's not in the next Kitplanes Engine Buyers Guide.

In the linked video, the clown with the microphone is Zoom Campbell. At S&F in 2000, just after dawn, he removed the cockpit covers from my JN4C, dumped it and all my flight gear in the wet grass, and proceeded to photograph the airplane. Zoom was banned from the S&F grounds at the time, thus the daybreak escapades. I still owe him a punch in the nose, so if you hear I got arrested...
 
In the linked video, the clown with the microphone is Zoom Campbell. At S&F in 2000, just after dawn, he removed the cockpit covers from my JN4C, dumped it and all my flight gear in the wet grass, and proceeded to photograph the airplane. Zoom was banned from the S&F grounds at the time, thus the daybreak escapades. I still owe him a punch in the nose, so if you hear I got arrested...

It's a sad world where BWB is gone and that clown is still with us :rolleyes:
 
I hesitated to comment on the news source, but I gave up on his print publication long before he did, due to his increasingly erratic 'reporting' behavior. Never paid any attention to ANN (because of him), so didn't know whether he'd changed his ways.
 
Post-Osh-2019, Deltahawk made the news on Avweb with some actual pricing and planning. They say that they are expecting certification of the 180hp engine by the end of 2019, and the initial market will be experimental, though the testbed is a Cirrus.

https://www.avweb.com/ownership/engines/deltahawk-jet-fueled-piston-engine-update/

They won't just sell you an engine though - they want you to deliver your airplane to them in Racine, WI and they will have their people install a FWF package, new cowl, engine management system etc and repaint the cowl to match your plane - for a total price point of $89,900.

They specifically mentioned an RV7 as the first FWF package development target. So they think they'll be able to sell you a $90k engine for a $60k airframe, apparently. Best of luck with that, I had high hopes for them.
 
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Great idea... in 1996.

In 1996 this was a novel idea with huge possibilities, but I fear that now it's too little too late. With 1kg/kWh batteries not far away and new solutions from Tesla/Maxwell, XNRGI and Innolith immanent, the future of practical renewable powered electric aircraft is so close I can taste it.

https://insideevs.com/news/355152/te...-battery-tech/
https://www.techspot.com/news/81029-...-evs-grid.html
https://insideevs.com/news/343771/in...nergy-density/

The sooner those of us who want to fly renewable/electric powered aircraft can have the opportunity to do so, the longer the rest will be allowed to continue flying machines powered by liquefied dinosaurs. If the majority of transport is converted to renewables soon, those that want to keep flying internal combustion can continue to do so because they will be such a small portion of total emissions no one will care and it will be seen as a novel pursuit. I know people who are some of the biggest advocates of electric vehicles, not because they're a bunch of unwashed tree huggers, but because they love V8's and want the opportunity to still be driving them in 20 years time. If you love your internal combustion engines, we need to start convincing everyone around us who doesn't really care what gets them from A to B that they need to make the transition, assuming they can afford to be an early adopter before the prices come down to parity by 2024. Better still we too should make the transition for anything but what we wish to fly. The owner of one of the largest warbird collections in Australia gets around at ground level using an EV, so it appears I'm not alone on this viewpoint.

If the recent rapid uptake of a certain Californian made automobile is anything to go by, I believe a new dawn is upon us and I suspect it doesn't include the clatter of a diesel engine.

Tom.
RV-7 IO-360M1B, but I wish it was electric.

PS. I have a EE20 Subaru diesel and Marcotte direct drive for sale to anyone not convinced by my electric aircraft vision...
 
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With about the same claimed BSFC as a Lyc running LOP and this price point, not sure there will be a lot people beating their door down to get one installed on an RV7... Years too late and tens of thousands too expensive to make any economic sense.
 

What?

Excuse me?

That is some fancy Kool-aid there!

I worked on two separate electric airplane projects over the years, and have been watching the liar's game on batteries since the late 1990's. Achieved energy density tracks about 1/3 of claimed over that time period. I've heard all the promises. 1 kwh/kg -- Aint gunna ever happen. Ever. But if the trend of 1/3 of claim continues, they will hit 333 wh/kg, which would still be a nice improvement. Tesla batteries are about 260 installed.
 
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They specifically mentioned an RV7 as the first FWF package development target. So they think they'll be able to sell you a $90k engine for a $60k airframe, apparently. Best of luck with that, I had high hopes for them.

Ok so hang on a sec. Delete everything firewall forward from the RV7 kit - mounts, cowl, prop, electrics, fuel system....with a new motor and new prop, all this stuff gotta be pushing 50K at least in parts alone. Another 30K round numbers for the engineering, manufacturing and packaging, install and paint maybe isnt really unreasonable. And that 89.9k is an offering for any airplane...so thats my cost for the Mustang2 cause nothings been done for that frame, and probably never would be again. But once an RV7 is done, they dont have to recreate that wheel again, so theres gotta be efficiencies......but there is a big trust factor that they can pull it off and the motor is worth it.
 
Ok so hang on a sec. Delete everything firewall forward from the RV7 kit - mounts, cowl, prop, electrics, fuel system....with a new motor and new prop, all this stuff gotta be pushing 50K at least in parts alone. Another 30K round numbers for the engineering, manufacturing and packaging, install and paint maybe isnt really unreasonable. And that 89.9k is an offering for any airplane...so thats my cost for the Mustang2 cause nothings been done for that frame, and probably never would be again. But once an RV7 is done, they dont have to recreate that wheel again, so theres gotta be efficiencies......but there is a big trust factor that they can pull it off and the motor is worth it.

Granted, it's less of a stretch for someone building new right now - you just stop at the firewall and ship the fuse to Wisconsin for them to do the work. But for someone looking to convert a flying airplane, that hill is simply too tall to climb.
 
Granted, it's less of a stretch for someone building new right now - you just stop at the firewall and ship the fuse to Wisconsin for them to do the work. But for someone looking to convert a flying airplane, that hill is simply too tall to climb.

Agree 100%......way way past that decision point. I'm guessing electric conversions will come sooner than one of these on my front end.
 
In 1996 this was a novel idea with huge possibilities, but I fear that now it's too little too late. With 1kg/kWh batteries not far away and new solutions from Tesla/Maxwell, XNRGI and Innolith immanent, the future of practical renewable powered electric aircraft is so close I can taste it.

I've been following this for decades. 1kWh/kg would mean to replace 1 gallon of gas would be approximately 8kg vs 2.7kg/gallon of 100LL (that amount precludes using more than 80% of the battery capacity to avoid damaging the battery). There is some additional savings in the weight of the motor, but we would still fall short on range for long distance flights. And, more tellingly, we don't have 1kWh/gk batteries yet. It is HOPED we will see commercial 350Wh/kg beginning at the end of this year from 24-M, which is busy building its very first factory (they produce in small quantity in their corporate HQ right now). Innolith is having scaling issues, the attraction with them is 30,000+ charge cycles but they are not yet cost competitive with Tesla / Panasonic / etc. I haven't heard any news that XNRGI is actually in production, but that doesn't prove anything.

Still, this is a very exciting time. Certainly for short hop planes and trainers this will universally be a "better solution" in the short term. Especially attractive about electric is that due to high torque / ability to deliver same hp over a wide variety of RPM it may never again be necessary to have C/S props or turbochargers. I'm looking forward to the day I can replace gas with battery and still get a 1,000 mile range.
 
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1 kwh/kg -- Aint gunna ever happen. Ever. But if the trend of 1/3 of claim continues, they will hit 333 wh/kg, which would still be a nice improvement. Tesla batteries are about 260 installed.

They already have Aluminum Air batteries with greater energy density than gasoline, the issue is price and rechargability. Clearly SOME kind of improvement is possible, the question is how clever we need to become to make them economically attractive.

24-M is targeting 350Wh/kg by the end of this year. I like their approach, which attacks manufacturing costs and can be applied to new chemistries as they arise. Their prediction is that they can build a new factory for around $20-40 million with the same capacity as a $1billion dollar plant producing traditional batteries.
 
Well this went into full thread drift. Back to Delta Hawk. That's pretty interesting they want you to pay 80 to $90,000 to be a beta tester and use your airplane to prototype different installations. Even more telling is the thread started in 2015 (Delta Hawk goes back much further) and here we are almost 2020 and they're still talking about it. Watching a YouTube video they say their real goal is certified market, so expect to pay certified prices. And by the way I believe it's a two stroke diesel. That's good for reliability but it's old farm tractor technology. I love Diesel. I have a diesel car (turbo, 4 valve per cylinder, common rail). It would be great if they could bring something to the market for much less money, but doesn't look like that's going to happen.
 
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I've followed the engine from the inception and spoke with the designer. One of the original arguments advanced to justify the heavier engine is that you could accept less fuel load because of the better BSFC (efficiency) giving a net improvement in weight.
 
There?s been promises about this engine dating back to 1996....almost a quarter of a century. One of the guys in my chapter bought one of these engines in 2005 and paid up front in full. The lead time on the engine at that time was supposed to be 3 months. He was strongly advised against this decision but he could not be dissuaded. Needless to say he never got his engine or money back. Several years later DeltaHawk had a booth at the Avalon Airshow in Australia (largest airshow in Southern Hemisphere) and were taking deposits for an engine they said would be delivered within months. Forget about DeltaHawk.
 
One of the guys in my chapter bought one of these engines in 2005 and paid up front in full... Needless to say he never got his engine or money back.
He should be bringing his receipt from that purchase to every airshow he attends and standing in front of the Deltahawk booth showing it to customers.
 
There?s been promises about this engine dating back to 1996....almost a quarter of a century. One of the guys in my chapter bought one of these engines in 2005 and paid up front in full. The lead time on the engine at that time was supposed to be 3 months. He was strongly advised against this decision but he could not be dissuaded. Needless to say he never got his engine or money back. Several years later DeltaHawk had a booth at the Avalon Airshow in Australia (largest airshow in Southern Hemisphere) and were taking deposits for an engine they said would be delivered within months. Forget about DeltaHawk.
Back in 2003 I flew my RV-6 ZU-EAA from South Africa to OSH and back. I visited the DH booth and listened to the promises. Back in the RSA I started planning to break the record set by Alex Henshaw in February 1939. 4 Days 10 hours and 16 minutes London-Cape Town-London. Solo.

For me the 180HP DH "A" engine was the obvious choice, so at Sun 'n Fun 2004 I paid the $5000 deposit. The engine was to be delivered 'next year.' In 2008 I gave up on DH, borrowed a friend's GP4 and knocked 18 hours 59 minutes off the record.:)

Today I received an email asking me if I still want my engine. I have an agreement that says $25 500 (less deposit) and no extra charge for changes, additions or modifications.

Now I wonder who else is in the same position as me, and how do we ensure the company sticks to the signed agreement? $89 900 is way over the top.
 
Today I received an email asking me if I still want my engine. I have an agreement that says $25 500 (less deposit) and no extra charge for changes, additions or modifications.

Now I wonder who else is in the same position as me, and how do we ensure the company sticks to the signed agreement?

Easy...cash on delivery, no exceptions, assuming you still want it.
 
What I don't understand about these new engine manufacturers is that you would think they should focus on getting their engines flying and building a reputation.

To do that, they should sell the first bunch at a price that undercuts their competition (Lycoming, in our case) until they have a known service history.

Anyone who pays more than the price of a comparable Lycoming engine on an unproven design that will take a lot of custom work to install isn't thinking right, IMHO.

Heck, my first engine was an O-290d2 and while an approved engine for the -9, it was not supported and I had to craft a number of custom parts and modify others. All of which added time.
 
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