If your curious how airplane engines are made, they'll be filming here tomorrow. It should air in a few months.

http://science.discovery.com/fansites/howitsmade/howitsmade.html

Feature engine is our Thunderbolt series
http://www.lycoming.textron.com/thunderbolt/index.jsp

COOL!

I've watched several episodes of that show. Oddly, the one I found most enjoyable was one about electric violins.

I'll keep an eye out for it. Is there a secret Guru gang sign you can flash, if you get on camera?

The pic of Nemesis looks like it was taken here, at the Reno Air races.

That is a cool show, I'll have to check the schedule for it...

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Class Winner!

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LOL

Thats awesome!!!

I'm absolutely obsessed with that show lol

That is an awesome show. I like to watch it when it's on....

Let us know in the future when it airs.

Matthew

that is a bad ass motor! I can only guess at cost...

what kinda power output are they getting from them?

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Class Winner!


It's hard to see but if you look over the nose in the second pic, the bunch of white buildings in the background is the kart track that I helped to build. We have to close down for a week when the Air Races are in town.

The Air Races are definately worth going to, 500+ mph at 50ft off the ground.

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I don't know about the Thunderbolt specifically but Nemesis is in the Unlimited class I think. The P51's in this class run Rolls Royce engines that came out of the factory with 1500 HP and in this class they are bumped to 3000 HP.

Yea, the old Merlins are bad to the bone, no doubt. They were upped to 2000 HP with the addition of the super charger... that's what they put out in the P51 during the war...

The PW 4360(?) can put out over 4000hp, but the aero and weight of the Corsair kinda kills the power advantage.

I would be curious what the Lycoming can do, but I doubt it's much more than 1000...

That show is addicting. They seem to provide just enough information so that the layperson not familiar with that particular technology can still understand what's going on. It's very well done.

Just saw an episode a few days ago where they were making a bow, highlighters, and something else. I think we had to leave before getting sucked into the third thing.

The race plane has the boost cranked up.

It runs 50ft off the ground @ 386.9mph!

Most of our production engines are "turbo normalized", in other words the turbo is there just to make up for the altitude.

They run on 110 low lead, not for the power, but to keep it from detonating at altitude.

The engine pictured is a 540ci flat six.

On the street, you rev out you engine, and then get into high gear to cruise, dropping the rpm substantially.

Aircraft engines get up to cruise speed, but only back the rpm down about 200rpm. It's left like that until you reach your destination.

You look at them kinda like truck engines. If you put an F1 engine in a tractor trailer, you'd blow everything else off the road, but not for long.

The props can only spin about 3,000rpm otherwise the tips of the props go sonic.
If you build an engine that can run direct, w/o reduction gearing, you can eliminate it's weight.

Also, reduction gears on airplanes have been tried. They work great on turbines, but a turbine doesn't have to deal with pistons firing.