How the heck is this cheaper than building a cheap knockoff version?
I don't know the state of Iran's manufacturing infrastructure, but they've been under various economic sanctions off and on for decades that restrict trade with much of the world, so it may be that things that seem easy for us to do might not be so trivial for them...?
For VERY small volume production? I suspect the tooling costs far outweigh the cost shipping stolen engines. You could do a lot of CNC machining out of billets instead of casting, but there are still lot of parts...
They’d never figure out how to hot-start it.
Read an article recently where a hangar was broken into in the south and thieves removed a 540. Most likely use was for airboats.
Same problem as with locally produced copies. The engines have to actually work for more than a few hours. Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.
They’re not exactly single-use disposable items, especially if you’re Iran.
It still would take a lot of tooling to make even a crap copy of a Rotax - I doubt that the volume is there to make it pay.
Early-2000s photo of the Antonov An-225 (yes, I know it's Ukrainian) with a Garmin 196 planted on the glareshield.
I can't FedEx something across the CONUS without costing an arm and a leg, but they can smuggle entire engines across the globe.
Yup. That's about as cloned as cloned can be.
And now you've found the story behind the Chicago Range Rover guys...
Pretty sure I saw Harbor Freight announcing they had those - and had a 20%-off coupon for them too.
You need your passport and in places a visa to cross a border, yet 2+ million people a year walk across all the borders from Venezuela into the USA. Go figure.
Nation states can do whatever they want.
