The building of this Turbine powered plane has been everything you could hope for. I had fun , I learned a lot, I got tired,I got scared, I was elated, and I have been very disappointed. The experience of  flying a turbine RV was great and I hope to have the opportunity to do it again , and soon.

    These are some of the problems we have had and the challenges that remain. Initially we designed the cowling  with NACA style inlet on the front of the cowl. I knew that pressure recovery from this type of opening would be less than 100% but others were sure it would be successful. It turns out that there was not really enough room to turn the air. I made the initial flight with the NACA style cowl. I got the plane air born and it flew very smoothly. The problems started to occur as the plane’s speed increased, the engine gave me the subtle pop pop sound warning of a possible compressor stall. We did some ground testing with tufts in the inlets and made changes to the inlets in an effort to help the air flow better. These changes did improve the air flow and I was able to achieve a higher airspeed but the pop pop still returned but at an increased speed. The NACA inlets ramp angle was fine during the static runs, since the air was able to parallel the cowl but as the speed increased the air probably did not follow the contour of the cowl and the NACA ramp effectively reduced the inlet area. A new inlet design was necessary.

    I then flew the plane with the new cowl inlets (ram air style) , what a difference. The plane climbed well and accepted speed increases with no compressor stall indications what so ever (one of those moments of elation). All changes in flight condition  were made very subtly. The air was very smooth for the 5th flight and the sensation was like flying an RV with the engine shut off.

    The engine was not designed for an electric propeller. There are no propellers designed for operation with a Turbine engine and therefore the plane had to be flown in a configuration we call manuel/manuel. The power and propeller must be adjusted together, even small attitude changes,or 30º turns require adjustments to one or both. The work load can be quite high.

    The plane is currently not flying due to an unsuccessful ground test of the engines governor feature of the fadec.