The TRACE Beaver is flying.

[Kzanol]

No standard beaver would be able to compete.

With a 5600lbs upgross & anything over 150mph neither would any turbine otter. For camp operators who only operate 6 months a year this is the answer (as long as it is reliable). It would have no problem taking 4 guys and all their gear 150 miles away everytime. No more cessna overloads or having to put the 4 guys in the otter because they had too much shit. As for TRACE's 750hp, maybe put that in an otter? I know the orenda was underpowered but this one may be the way to go instead of the turbine. I know that an operator here in Red Lake paid over 750k to convert his otter coming up 3 years ago. Not sure if they have even been able to pay it off yet.

[Hornblower]

Overhaul is $40,000.

That's very comparable, and if you take into account the increased speed, decreased SFC and higher gross, there is probably a significant $/lb/mile advantage ... too lazy to figure it out now though.

[duCapo]

I'm with Cat. it looks pretty good and Bill Alder is involved, he knows his Beavers, I had a discussion with him in Victoria at the Viking conference. I think one day in the not too far future, we will not be able to operate the 985 commercially on the Beaver. This could well be an alternative to a turbine. Maybe just my paranoia, when it comes to TC, but there you have it. I will probably get trashed for saying it, it is just my opinion, I sincerely hope I am wrong.

[bronson]

I started looking into the Thunder in the '80s. My thought was it would be a common engine for almost the whole fleet, Dhc-2,3,6 , Goose and Mallard. Seems to me the Thunder was to get something like .47 hp/lb (fuel)/hr. which was better than even the 985 I think and the extra 100 horses would have been nice on the Otter. Too bad all these years later and the thing is still in development.

[Human Factor]

This thread is useless without an audio clip of the V8 at take-off power.

[bmc]

I think it looks ok.

It would be interesting to do the number crunching of operating that machine on a sched run. More payload and faster trips could mean more revenue than you could realize with a stock machine. Depending on your operation, it would be interesting to find the break even point.

flyingsafely....what is the sales pitch regarding breakeven on the investment? You must have some numbers based on some scenarios.

[skymarc]

I like the look too, too bad its not a diesel and burn Jet A !
100LL is expensive and getting harder to get up north.

What kind of fuel burn and cruise speed are we talking ?

[Road Trip]

I heard pretty high 30-35 gallons / hour. But that's second had would be nice to know the official numbers.

[rigpiggy]

I heard pretty high 30-35 gallons / hour. But that's second had would be nice to know the official numbers.

They show 500 hp for cruise so if that is the case, fuel flows aren't bad. the proof in the pudding would be a side by side fly off, using the same fuel flows, and comparing speeds.

[fish4life]

maybe I'm naive but with the extraordinary leaps in engine technology and reliability these days from car engines perhaps it is about time aviation engines take a step back and re-analyze where they are coming from some of these new engines with direct injection are getting 12:1 compression ratio's on regular grade fuel with the torque and power curves much flatter then they ever used to be so with a little tuning an engine running at 3000rpm would not be very hard to do. The problem with most aviation engines is they are stuck being air cooled and as a result will always be more inherently unreliable and produce much less hp / cu since they have to allow much greater tolerances in the engine to expand and contract with limited and uneven cooling air gives, while a liquid cooled engine can be made to much tighter specs as it is always going to be operating within a given temperature range. An example could be the new "ecoboost" as for calls it they escape has a 1.6L ecoboost producing 173hp and a less usable 5700rpm but 184lb/ft at only 2500rpm, that is a 97 cu in engine we are talking about, the 2.0L ecoboost is an even more impressive 231hp @ 5500rpm but a very health 270lb/ft at 3000rpm. By the way that 2L engine is only 122 cubes. I realize that weight of car engines could be an issue but the radiator and associated parts can be shrunk substantially as a result of not sitting in stop and go traffic like a car, as well when you can take an engine that is a 1/4 to a 1/3 of the displacement of an aviation engine of similar power the weight will become a lot closer. Now take into consideration that these new technology car engines will probable only burn 1/3 - 1/2 the gas (just estimating) of its aviation counterpart you no longer need to carry as much gas further increasing the weight differential. Lets face it general aviation is dying and dying quickly it desperately needs and injection of new life and the only way I see that happening is if they car modify these new tech car engines for airplanes, much more fuel effecient and at half the cost of a traditional aviation engine this is the new way to go.

end of rant

[howard40]

The average car engine uses its higher horsepower for a few mins ,or even seconds, a day and loafs along using about 30 hp if the traffic is moving at about 100 kms an hour.
Push that little sucker along at 75% of its rated output for long periods of time and let us know how it holds up.
There are a lot of things aviation engines should be adopting from automotive, like electronic ignition, fadec, fuel injection etc. but those things are expensive in low numbers and cheaper in high numbers. Aviation is a low numbers game.

[fish4life]

Yes but in aviation torque is what matters and the new DI with twin turbo technology allows you to get this torque at low rpms