Raptor Aircraft

why does it seem like the controller is always a step behind there? there is usually an extra bit of a pause before they respond to any request. even when PM declared an emergency and a little bit of urgency is called for, it seems like they need to stop reading their book, put the bookmark in, and set it aside before responding.

(To be clear, Im not accusing the controllers of impropriety, or even being bad at their jobs. its just an odd delay that Ive noticed in a lot of the raptor videos)
 
Haha, Peter has been asking people in his YT comments to delete posts mentioning the engine failure because they're "spoiling the outcome of the upcoming video."

I guess that's a good sign that he's not too shaken by the emergency, more concerned with building the suspense for his fans. I'm actually looking forward to this video to see how he plays it.
 
Wrench978 said:
why does it seem like the controller is always a step behind there? there is usually an extra bit of a pause before they respond to any request. even when PM declared an emergency and a little bit of urgency is called for, it seems like they need to stop reading their book, put the bookmark in, and set it aside before responding.

(To be clear, Im not accusing the controllers of impropriety, or even being bad at their jobs. its just an odd delay that Ive noticed in a lot of the raptor videos)
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Training tower.

Did you notice a different voice came on to firmly tell someone calling to stay out of the delta? I'm guessing that was the trainer taking over from a student.
 
I am happy the most hated airplane builder is not injured. Hopefully the engine is toast and the most hated airplane builder stops the insanity and quietly goes away. There is nothing wrong with being a software engineer! I wish him all the best and hopes he stays far far away from aviation.
 
231TC said:
Haha, Peter has been asking people in his YT comments to delete posts mentioning the engine failure because they're "spoiling the outcome of the upcoming video."
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Wow. I'd like to say I'm surprised, but I'm kind of not.
 
Wrench978 said:
why does it seem like the controller is always a step behind there? there is usually an extra bit of a pause before they respond to any request. even when PM declared an emergency and a little bit of urgency is called for, it seems like they need to stop reading their book, put the bookmark in, and set it aside before responding.

(To be clear, Im not accusing the controllers of impropriety, or even being bad at their jobs. its just an odd delay that Ive noticed in a lot of the raptor videos)
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Perhaps the controller working was pushing the dead pool.
 
Wes Montgomery was a jazz guitar player, stuck in moderate obscurity and low pay. With a wife and 6 kids to feed, he quit gigging, took a second shift job as a welder in an Indianapolis factory and practiced the guitar alone every night, playing quietly so as not to disturb the kids. After two years, he emerged from his apartment as one of the best guitarists in the world.

Maybe Peter should take this opportunity to spend a couple of years woodshedding his engineer chops.
 
Peter Anderson said:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N352TD/history/20210204/1645Z/KVLD/KVLD

Flight track shows maybe a power off 180 at the end. Good job getting it down as he was descending rapidly when the motor went. 1500fpm at 800 feet agl. I bet that was a scary ride.


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At a time like that, it would sure be nice to know how slow one could go without the airplane ceasing to fly, and what it does just before that....seems like there’s a name for that speed, and it normally gets tested? Hmmmmm....
 
Omalley1537 said:
At a time like that, it would sure be nice to know how slow one could go without the airplane ceasing to fly, and what it does just before that....seems like there’s a name for that speed, and it normally gets tested? Hmmmmm....
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Would be nice to know that one thing, too... what’s it called? I dunno... maybe the speed at which you get the best glide or something.
 
He's not going to put a Lycoming on it, the Velocity already exists. But I do hope that he takes this time to solve some of the bigger engine / cooling issues before taking back to the sky with it.
 
Sierra_ [QUOTE="Omalley1537 said:
At a time like that, it would sure be nice to know how slow one could go without the airplane ceasing to fly, and what it does just before that....seems like there’s a name for that speed, and it normally gets tested? Hmmmmm....
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If you forget about all the band aids he put on. Forget the "flying off" comments. Forget the comments that he was going to forego stall testing and just think about his total flight time and his overheating issues, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't quite get to the best glide phase of flight testing. Dont really have time to figure out flight envelope if it's constantly bordering on meltdown or have seals or fittings that won't seal. If an AN fitting leaks, it's because they were over tightened. Unless like he speculated their was grit that kept it from sealing. Which would have meant the engine was already making metal. I'd suspect the oil pressure drop and subsequent failure have to do with the redrive. The seal failed once. Why? Poor engineering? Overheat? Didn't he have something weird with the prop hub?

As others have said, tear the diesel, psru, turbos, plumbing, etc out and put in an aircraft engine until you dyno your set up for a couple thousand hours. The problem is that he became so emotionally and financially invested in that audi (he drives an Audi as well) that he felt he had to keep going. After all, what's that IE2 from lycoming go for 85k? Not to mention all the extra cost to switch everything over. Maybe this will be his blessing in disguise if he does choose to go that route. I have doubts he would because of who were talking about. But it would most likely lessen his aft weight, which would in turn allow him to take out the home depot water tanks and everything else up front. Hopefully help cg and lower overall weight. He's got a lot to think about. Scrap prototype one or build off it?
 
OneCharlieTango said:
This would seem to be an answer to the often asked, “why do we have to fly behind 1940’s technology?”
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No. An imbecile abusing an engine is not a good analog for that. Would you stop eating because you ate old fish once and got violently ill? In reality, we do have new engine tech out there..:

-Austro, as of 2017 there were over 1,500 of these in operation and per Diamond they have over 1,000,000 flight hours now. Full FADEC, diesel, the sky hasn't fallen.

-Both Continental and Lyco make a full FADEC single lever engine as well.. they're expensive as hell, >$100,000, thanks in part to tiny volume and no real way of retrofitting a fleet of 60 year old derelict spam cans. BUT, Tecnam is using full fadec continentals for their new twins which are going to Cape Air

To the contrary, watching PM misuse that Audi should give people confidence in what modern engines are capable of. You even look at an engine wrong in most GA planes and it will fail. Plus, we don't know what happened.. I suspect PM's rube goldberg redrive is the cause of the issue, or routinely running it at temps that any sane person would think "gee, that's probably too hot for continued routine operation"..
 
Haha, he's still releasing his backlog of flights one at a time, making us wait until Sunday for the emergency.
 
Tantalum said:
You even look at an engine wrong in most GA planes and it will fail.
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Wat? Aircraft engines take an ungodly amount of abuse on the regular, and keep soldiering on. I think I was in diapers when one of my mills was remanufactured, and probably in orthodontia for the other one. It's one of the best parts of them being 1940s dumb tractor engines, is that they're dumb tractor engines and seldom fail, certainly seldom without forewarning signs.

I don't disagree with the rest of your desire for modernity, though. I think liquid cooling in some form would cure a lot of ills regarding tolerances and engine management, at a cost of weight and another vector for failure.
 
schmookeeg said:
Wat? Aircraft engines take an ungodly amount of abuse on the regular, and keep soldiering on. I think I was in diapers when one of my mills was remanufactured, and probably in orthodontia for the other one. It's one of the best parts of them being 1940s dumb tractor engines, is that they're dumb tractor engines and seldom fail, certainly seldom without forewarning signs.

I don't disagree with the rest of your desire for modernity, though. I think liquid cooling in some form would cure a lot of ills regarding tolerances and engine management, at a cost of weight and another vector for failure.
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Honestly the big wildcard with these engines is the user. I don't deny that simplicity and few moving parts has its place in aviation (less stuff to break). But it seems the vast vast vast majority of engine failures are user driven.. and if not a complete failure, premature work being needed prior to TBO by poor engine management. People running too hot, too rich, wrong MP/prop settings.. etc. There should be known engineering derived values for these that a FADEC can stay within much better than "gee, Mike Bush said this, but my mechanic said that.. hmmm.." .. just have the engineers who developed the thing give the parameters to a coder and be done with it. Even if you introduce a new failure point (the fadec) I'm willing to wager it more than makes up for that by reducing the human failure point
 
schmookeeg said:
Aircraft engines take an ungodly amount of abuse on the regular, and keep soldiering on
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this part though I'll disagree with. 9 liters turning 2,500 rpm and putting out ~300 hp is not asking a lot. And competent pilots keep the CHTs at a modest 380ish or under. They also sit at one power setting for most of their life.

but this dead cow has been milked to death. personally I'd feel safer crossing the Gulf in a DA62 (or 50!) than any legacy twin

(in the meantime I'm anxiously awaiting the next Raptor update on YouTube)
 
True, the cow is pretty much kibble at this point :D I'll withdraw the objection so we can focus on the remains of the raptor project

We can agree, perhaps, that slapping an Audi TDI onto an airframe will have waayyyyyyyy more failure points than the same IO-540/IO-550 or even exotic liquid cooled thing like the TSIOL-550 or CD-300?

I am secretly hoping this was just a redrive thing, though, and not.. well.. the cooling or the turbos or some other fundamental hurdle Peter won't be able to jump easily. I like the idea of access to cheap and reliable auto engines, even if it comes with compromises.
 
$4k for a car-part special and back at it. Engine reserve of $400/hr offset by fuel cost differential.

Investment opportunity now to buy salvage 3.0 engines. Imagine the demand for the "10 hour twin-turbo" engines.

Petey came out smelling like a rose here and is creating investment opportunities in these difficult times.
 
schmookeeg said:
I am secretly hoping this was just a redrive thing, though, and not.. well.. the cooling or the turbos or some other fundamental hurdle Peter won't be able to jump easily. I like the idea of access to cheap and reliable auto engines, even if it comes with compromises.
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We likely won't get a straight answer on the failure point for various reasons but I suspect that the failure was self inflicted and that the Audi designed components were not the cause.
 
Whatever the cause of the failure, he'll find a way to blame someone else. That thermostat he had no idea about, he blamed it on Motec. Maybe it was partially on them for not asking what setting he wanted to use, but it was totally on him not even being aware of a major component of the cooling system in the engine he chose to put on an airplane.
 
schmookeeg said:
I am secretly hoping this was just a redrive thing
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I think that's the most likely culprit..

schmookeeg said:
We can agree, perhaps, that slapping an Audi TDI onto an airframe will have waayyyyyyyy more failure points than the same IO-540/IO-550 or even exotic liquid cooled thing like the TSIOL-550 or CD-300?
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Yes!
 
Tantalum said:
Honestly the big wildcard with these engines is the user. I don't deny that simplicity and few moving parts has its place in aviation (less stuff to break). But it seems the vast vast vast majority of engine failures are user driven.. and if not a complete failure, premature work being needed prior to TBO by poor engine management.
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Figuring out if a given engine failure is user-driven is tough; maybe the engine failed because of what the PREVIOUS owner did, not the current owners actions. So the NTSB report wouldn't mention it.

However, engine failures...whether due to operator action or not... are relatively rare. I've got a database of Beech 36 accidents running from 1998 through 2014. There are 305 total, of which only 24 (7.9%) involved mechanical failure of the engine. Out of 573 Cessna 210 accidents (1998 through 2015), 48 (8.3%) were due to mechanical failure of the engine.

So the actual impact of those improperly running the engines is probably fairly low. Though, sure, the NTSB records don't reflect engines that needed to be overhauled early. But the fact is, we have SOME numbers available for aviation engines, and little for those with automotive-heritage ones.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Tantalum said:
this part though I'll disagree with. 9 liters turning 2,500 rpm and putting out ~300 hp is not asking a lot. And competent pilots keep the CHTs at a modest 380ish or under. They also sit at one power setting for most of their life.

but this dead cow has been milked to death. personally I'd feel safer crossing the Gulf in a DA62 (or 50!) than any legacy twin

(in the meantime I'm anxiously awaiting the next Raptor update on YouTube)
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Horsepower is a function of torque at a given RPM. An engine that peaks at a low rpm may not have impressive horsepower numbers, but they will have a higher torque number than an engine that requires additional rpm to peak (for the same hp). In your example, that engine is making 630 lb-ft of torque to make 300 hp at 2500 rpm. That’s impressive given the era these were developed in.
 
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schmookeeg said:
I am secretly hoping this was just a redrive thing, though, and not.. well.. the cooling or the turbos or some other fundamental hurdle Peter won't be able to jump easily. I like the idea of access to cheap and reliable auto engines, even if it comes with compromises.
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The first indication of trouble was a loss of oil pressure, so I doubt the PSRU was the issue.

It couldn't possibly be the results of his uneducated modifications to the injection timing and resultant excessive temperature and pressures. No way it was related to running oil temperatures in excess of 250 degrees. Couldn't have been caused by stacking two improperly sized turbochargers that resulted in unmeasured EGTs hot enough to destroy exhaust valves.

No doubt a manufacturing defect in the engine was the culprit.
 
3393RP said:
Couldn't have been caused by stacking two improperly sized turbochargers that resulted in unmeasured EGTs hot enough to destroy exhaust valves.
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I shouldn't be surprised seeing this, but here I am :lol:
 
wanttaja said:
However, engine failures...whether due to operator action or not... are relatively rare
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and as they should be.. but it doesn't negate the fact that these piston engines require a lot of user babysitting. I've heard it from many pilots that transitioning from piston to turbine actually results in a reduced workload, things happen faster, but engine management is dramatically reduced

Omalley1537 said:
In your example, that engine is making 630 lb-ft of torque to make 300 hp at 2500 rpm. That’s impressive given the era these were developed in
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Certainly impressive, and cutting edge for what we had at the time. I'm not asking for mass scale overhaul, but a move towards incremental improvements could benefit the end user
 
donjohnston said:
Seriously... That horse you've been beating is dead. Now you're just beating the bones into dust.

Give it a rest.
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But wouldn't it be cool to have an IE2 style engine to have available as an STC for someone with an angle valve 540? Minus the twin turbos
 

Here is video of the most hated aircraft builder landing with no power and getting towed back to the hangar with a golf cart. It does indeed seem to indicate he had a complete engine failure. Glad he is unhurt!
 
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