6 ms·
ICE = Internal combustion engine Off the top of my head: - At certain temperatures and pressures you have to consider icing in the carburettor, which will blo
by sooper 9y ago
ICE = Internal combustion engine
Off the top of my head:
- At certain temperatures and pressures you have to consider icing in the carburettor, which will block air flow into the engine.
- You have to tune (lean) the fuel input to reduce fuel consumption and prevent spark plug fouling, but not lean it too much that you overheat the engine.
Some more in-depth examples at http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/engine-management http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/engine-management
- mpweiher 9y agoAnd when descending, you have to be sure not to shock cool it etc. Airplane gasoline engines are a mess, the technology is ~1950s at best and just hasn't advanced at all, with a few exceptions that, pardon the pun, never really took off.
- mnw21cam 9y agoA lot of that "mess" is due to a couple of critical requirements. Namely, low engine weight and reliability.
- pdelbarba 9y agoAt this point it's mostly certification cost and liability insurance cost that's keeping the tech back. You can easily modify modern aircraft engines to be more reliable and efficient (PMAGs) but you need an STC (certification procedure) to make the switch so the experimental home builders are the only ones who actually benefit.
- cjrp 9y agoRotax seem to be doing pretty well, they're used in a lot of popular trainers
- sokoloff 9y agoShock cooling as a concern for cylinder cracking is a fairly well debunked myth at this point, IMO, short of crashing your airplane into a cold lake. Agreed the tech is old, but the uncommanded in-flight shutdown rate for pistons is also very low. Part of that is driven by high maintenance demands (some of which introduces failures themself), but a lot is due to the simplicity and redundancy. Would I like variable spark timing (beyond impulse couplers for starting)? Would I like more automated starting, especially for hot starts? Would I like thermostatic cooling of cylinders? Yes, but not if they came with any substantial increase in failure modes. When I'm taking the family 700 miles at night in a single-engine airplane to grandma's for christmas, I'll suffer with arcane checklists and having to manually manage the engine if it reduces the chance of an uncommanded shutdown by even 5%.
- needusername 9y ago> carburettor Excuse me? Carburettor? In 2017? > You have to tune (lean) the fuel input to reduce fuel consumption and prevent spark plug fouling, but not lean it too much that you overheat the engine. Can't the engine management software take care of this?
- charlesdenault 9y agoMost flight schools have much older aircraft-- think 70s and 80s-- that have carbs. Newer aircraft are fuel injected, but often more expensive per hour.
- needusername 9y agoVW Golf are fuel injected since 1975.
- Govindae 9y agoBut they've only been able to fly since 2016.
- DonaldFisk 9y agoCars are different, though you could have pointed out that the Messerschmitt BF-109 had fuel injection in the 1930s.
- chipsa 9y agoAn average car company makes millions of cars. Probably millions of a given model. Cessna has made ~44k 172 Skyhawks. It's one of the most produced aircraft, and it's been in production largely unchanged since 1956. I think Tesla is going to make more Model 3s this year than Cessna is going to make Skyhawks.
- needusername 9y agoDon't they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars? Surely you're going to find an engine manufacturer that can build you an engine that's not half a century old.