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And a pre-existing profit-making industrial base, run and staffed by people who wanted to (and did) put money in their own pockets by being faster than more effective than other bidders. And that extended down several tiers of subcontracting.

My experience leads me to believe that with aerospace innovation and invention, technical and financial risk are mitigated by selling first to the government, initially via funded R&D and then through less demanding production orders.

Probably neither hopes nor dreams. Rotax is a division of Bombardier RECREATIONAL Products, headquartered in Canada and successfully split off in 2003 from the more 'serious' parts of Bombardier that make jet aircraft and mass transit products. Since the 1960s they've operated primarily as the...

Likely because it didn’t climb well without one. In addition to peak power, which is all you need to worry about with a CS prop, with a FP prop an engine needs to have a relatively flat spread of power to reduced RPM to allow good climb for a heavy plane. That characteristic tends to be...

The problem with the Porsche engine was that it was heavy, heavy enough to require a longer fuselage on the Mooney, and despite being smooth and easy to operate offered lower installed performance than the Lycoming. As a result it failed in the marketplace, embarrassing Porsche and damaging...

One difference there is between southern Italian engineering labor rates and US labor rates. About a factor of two.

E-AB aircraft are not certified, either by type or individually. The easiest to find source of data for E-AB aircraft completions in the Vans website, which only reflects one type although its obviously the most popular type right now. About 11,000 Vans RVs have been built and flown and...

The lower price end of US new plane market has for that reason shifted to E-AB aircraft, quite successfully and fully within FAA regulations. The light aircraft market is not at all dysfunctional, it’s just responding to the fact that several generations of aircraft built since 1945 were not...

I was very happy to choose my current plane and buy it for about 3 months of my then-salary in 2010, and I’m still happy to be flying it 14 years later. At the time I thought that it was the best time ever to be buying and flying an aircraft. I’m not so sure that’s the case today, inflation...

The difference is that an open market has created the current situation, driven by choice.

No, there aren't. The low RPM 160 HP version of what is normally a 180 HP engine in parallel valve configuration, or a 200 HP in angle valve configuration, is a specialty engine used for a very specific application. It pays a substantial price in climb and high altitude performance by being...

For fair comparison of performance between with turbo-Rotax gasoline engine that can operate at 100% power for only 5 minutes, you don't pick the Lycoming with the worst power density of any as a result of being de-rated for extreme durability when operated at 100% rated power indefinitely. In...

An IO-360 Lycoming is rated at either 180 HP or 200 HP continuous at sea level, not 160 HP.

I work in the business. It is amazing how a series of bankruptcies and loss of investment can create a situation in which a huge amount of money has been spent in order for people who didn’t fund the development to make a small amount of money. Oddly enough the people making the lost...

The Rotax 916 is limited to 137 HP continuous, 160 HP for 5 minutes. @tspear, I’m not “burying my head in the sand”, I’m being realistic about the market and the budgets it takes to develop new aircraft engines. In the likely commercial volume I think the price would need to be $250K per...

The problem is that in the real world you have to convince the actual market to buy what you offer, at the price you supply it. The only actual market where diesels have a chance for commercial sales is Europe, with market volume limited by current politics and economics that are killing light...

The four cylinder Rotax is a point design with small cylinders, focused on relatively low horsepower applications, initially 80 HP. In order to expand to significantly higher power using the same approach, more cylinders would be required. A six cylinder version might work at say 180 HP, but a...

There are a few people worldwide who can justify paying for diesel aircraft engines. Some of them might like to see the GA scene twist around to align with their interests, claiming that it would expand GA into places where there is little or no aviation gasoline infrastructure now. In reality...

When my wife and I got married and rearranged our lives to cohabitate, the biggest challenge of all was a 13-1/2 year old white shepherd who needed to move from one side of the world to the other. She made it, on the only direct flight between two points in the general vicinity of the origin...

An open market is ultimately not controlled by sellers, it is controlled by buyers. If you don’t like something or how it was produced, do your part and don’t buy it. Country of origin info is mandatory on products sold in the US for a reason. If you and others buy it anyway, it is you who...