We've almost done an annual on the plane, inspecting all the various components at 40+ hours and everything looks very good. As soon as we get the systems complete and in the air for testing, we can start two thing; VIDEO and working on our 2008 Airshow routine.
Everyone has been hounding us for video, I promise you'll start to get some soon.
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Well, we mentioned yesterday was going to be a big day, and it was. The best possible senario, a non event. As soon as the plane was back, in the hangar it went and off came the wing root fairings and all the side panels. Time to get moving on the bleed air system and oxygen system. As of dinner time yesterday, the o2 was up and running, with on demand system working perfectly.
The rest of the week will be dedicated to getting the bleed air system designed and installed. Just waiting for parts and we should wrap this up by the end of the weekend for a high altitude run next monday.
This will be the last of the system check out and then we'll be focusing on learning to fly in the vertical.
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Greetings All,
We are getting ready to bring the Turbine Toucan home tomorrow. It is an emotional time for us, so much has had to happen to get to this stage of the game. We have a great deal to be thankful for. So many people have gone out of their way to provide support to the program. Our families have perhaps suffered the most, not seeing much of us in almost two years now.
Wonderful people at Hollister airport, people like Jerry Gabe who provided us tools, a hangar and emotional support when we had not so good days. Everyone at Hollister would do what they could to help out, and we are so grateful.
So, Monday we come back home. Back to all the familiar sights and sounds we'd been around everyday building the plane. I sure won't miss the long commutes down south. I can remember forgetting a much needed tool and not finding out til we got down to Hollister, so three hours later and half the day gone, I returned with the tool. And to boot, my darn truck gets a little better then 11mpg, just AWEFUL. I am thinking mini cooper now days.
I'm sure when we arrive, it will be like any other day to anyone else, but not to us. It is a day I have thought about for many, many months. To be able to just drive down the road a few miles, fuel the plane up and just go flying is a dream. To randomly come to the airport for a few hours after dinner to do little things seems so exciting (My wife would argue I need a life).
So, although the 13th means many things to many people, August 13th looks to be a good day for us.
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Here is one of several posters planned for next year. dk
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After over 4 months of being away from home, we are close to concluding the initial test phase of the Turbine Toucan. The plane will be back in San Carlos in less than one weeks time! We have waited a long time for this day, and it is quickly closing.
We still have a great deal of work to do but now we can do it from our home airport, which is only a few miles from home. We'll keep you posted as soon as we're home.
-Team Turbine Toucan
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Greetings Everyone!!
Exciting news from the Toucan Team; we have slowly started introducing aerobatics/unusual attitudes into our test regime. The airplane saw extreme angle of attack attitudes (75%+ deck angle) at very slow speeds. We then brought in the power and was able to accelerate out of high alpha to between 3500-4000fpm maintaining the same deck angle. This is all in an effort to work into hovering and accelerating out of the vertical, so we are on track.
Lots of traditional maneuvers have been explored, and the control harmony of the plane is better than we have expected. We’ve been as fast as 200kts straight and level cruise so we are creeping up on the speed.
We have had 12 squawk free flights and have now introduced the entire fuel system. The duration of flights is now well over an hour. Our next venture is to go up high and establish all the at altitude profiles for the plane before we close out the phase one test flights. We are quickly rounding up on 40 hours, so we’ll be able to return to SQL in about another week. Then it is off to exploring the potential of the aircraft.
We're really making some serious headway with the volume and length of flights and the plane has lived up to it "billing". Can't wait to come back home soon. -Have a great weekend!
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You know, it's always fun to put put a little perspective in life. In this case, a little perspective with regard to scale. You really don't have any idea how big the propeller is on the Turbine Toucan until you have something to compare to, so here you go. We just thought this was a fun photo.
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Today we are back in full swing after returning from Oshkosh. Another highly productive day, with a lot of great data. We have finally introduced both fuel tanks and have greatly increased our flying times. At the rate we are now going after today’s flights, we are very close to reaching our 40 hour test period, which will allow us to come back home to San Carlos (KSQL). We have no new squawks since about 10 or so flights ago, so we are really starting to see this plane settle out nicely.
As soon as we get back to San Carlos, we will be working on introducing our built-in oxygen to the program. We want to establish best cruise speed/burn at altitude (17,500), which will help us understand our exact range and capabilities for ferrying the aircraft. We are also working on max altitude for airspeed records, so it is all coming up fairly fast, should be a great fall for us.
We are also in the planning stages for shooting air-to-air, both still and HD, which is a ways out but non the less exciting. We’ll keep you posted.
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OK, so we’re not at Oshkosh but we did get a very uplifting story we thought we’d share with you. Dave Morss had just spent the better part of the week getting a Bearcat to Oshkosh, accompanied by a Sea Fury. After a long trip with several mechanicals, Dave and group finally make it to Oshkosh. Dave just getting out of the airplane and surrounded by $4 million dollars of war bird iron, was feeling pretty darn good, perhaps even manly.
Well the first words out of peoples mouth when Dave got out of the plane was…..Hey, your Dave Morss right? Tell me about the Turbine Toucan. Is it here yet? And I guess they went on about the plane. Staggering to think that two airplanes with so much history, are so extremely rare and valuable that someone would be more interested in the Toucan.
So Dave wonders over to the Epic booth (which he is also a part of their program) to say hello and check in, just to hear a similar story. “Hey Dave, how’s the Toucan doing, you have to tell me all about that plane…..”
So, we are at least at Oshkosh in spirit! If your going to Oshkosh, have a blast and let us know what’s out there and all the buzz. Have fun. David
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Yesterday morning we continue to make progress building more time on the aircraft. We calibrated the rear fuel tank and introduced more fuel to the test phase. We'll now be flying longer duration flights and setting up cross country profiles. We also finally removed paper checklists from the cockpit now that we have checklists that we think will serve is well.
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The Team has been busy over the weekend trying to get as much time on the plane as we possibly can. We were so close to making it to Oshkosh before we ran into some vibration issues that set us back a few weeks. Now on track, we could be back in San Carlos very soon.
We have been up to four flights in one day, so that is promising. We continue to work out best prop RPM's for various situations. This week we will start working on fuel management between all three tanks. A lot to figure out best way to burn. We will also work on x country profiles.
In order to the get the burn down and increase our range, the only way we're going to do that is to go high. Current burn at 10,000ft is no less than 40.4gph. At 17,500 we should see about 32gph. Because we have built in oxygen, that is not an issue. What is an issue is heat. It is damn cold up there! We didn't think we'd be into having to install the bleed air heat system this early, we were wrong. We have the entire system ready to go, so that will be a few days work but well worth the effort when we start going high.
I wonder how many symmetrical wings have ever been at 17,500? My guess would be only a few. We continue to move into lot of uncharted territory, so this is were the fun begins.
We will continue to report on the planes performance as we start flying longer duration flights, in the hour to two hour range.
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Team Turbine Toucan made its sixth flight this afternoon with zero squawks. We think we have finally made it over a fairly large hurtle. At this point, everyone on the team wants to do everything possible to fly off the remainder of the required 40 hours before heading back to San Carlos Airport. We have now passed the half way mark!
We're keeping our fingers crossed we can continue the momentum and be back home in three weeks time now. More to come. Have a good weekend
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Incredible 24 hours. We managed 5 flights in two days with ZERO Squawks. This is just huge for the entire Infinity Entertainment & Turbine Toucan team. We finally passed through two flights in one day wall. We are really accelerating the program, and have amazing info to share.
The big news was that we have successfully transitioned Butch Pfeifer into the cockpit. Butch has now flown the plane 4 of the 5 flights. Even Bigger news, Ken Erickson made his first flight in the Toucan today! All this was possible based on the wealth of knowledge Dave Morss provided the team.
Butch took the plane through its paces and after the fourth flight, managed to inch up a little past 180 knots (or 208mph), and it was smooth as glass. Butch also worked at various altitudes all the way up to 10,000ft. We also managed to bring down the landing distance to 900 feet, which was a very big deal. We were not sure if we were going to be able to bring the plane back to San Carlos, which is 2600ft, but that seems to be a non issue at this point.
More to come!
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Sunday was another positive step forward for the team. Dave Morss reported last week that when we first started introducing more power on take off, we were starting to get a little vibration. This is something we’ve never seen before.
After over a week of methodically trying to understand what we were seeing/feeling, we finally are starting to understand the frequency and amplitude of the vibration. At first we thought we were passing through the natural frequency of the cowling. If this was the case, could we fly through it or would we exacerbate the problem. We did static tests and high-speed taxi without the cowling and the vibration was still present. That was actually the good news. If it were the shape or the frequency of the cowl/nacelle we would be building a new cowl. That would set us back months.
We also were able to eliminate several other components in the process. On Sunday, we focused on changing the natural frequency of the engine baffles. We stiffened them up a bit in the process of providing the cowl greater support since it has a very long ARM. With such a large intake (designed for high power & low airspeed), we continued to come back to the baffling. The pulsing of the air from the propeller could very well be shaking the baffling which is very wide and has a lot of surface area.
And at low initial speeds (take off) and high power setting, the pulsing becomes a bit more predominant. As continuous airflow develops from higher forward speeds, it has a tendency to dampen the pulsations developed by the propeller. Which might be why we are seeing this at take off more then anywhere else.
After a good static run with modified baffles and reinforcements, we did not find the vibration. So, only way to know if we found the problem is to go out and FLY IT!
And that is what we plan on doing ASAP. The plane, as of Sunday night is topped off and ready for flying which will happen as early as Monday or Wednesday. We’ll keep you all posted on our findings.
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Perhaps one of the most demanding aspects to setting up the Turbine Toucan would be in the governor and prop set up. What people do not realize is that at ground idle, the turbine is producing about 100hp. We have residual thrust that needs to be managed, and it is a challenge to do. We have fine tuned all the pitch settings for ground idle, and seems to be working fairly well now.
After about our sixth landing, we were using no more then about 2400ft of runway. This is only using brakes and not reverse thrust, so we think this number will go way down.
Our initial flight was just like any other high performance aerobatic aircraft short approach. That is, until you get in ground effect. Then the residual thrust wants to carry you down the runway fairly fast. It's wild to see Dave fly the approach, which is about 90kts and soon as he flattens out a bit, the plane just starts screaming. Well, that is almost completely behind us now.
But as we introduce more power (remember we haven't seen greater then about 50%), we are starting to get a little vibration. We thought perhaps it was the prop, but we just dynamically balanced it. Then we thought it could be some harmonics going on at certain power settings. It's not a huge deal but getting to the bottom of it is kind of a challenge.
We think that we might be seeing some prop cavitation but not yet certain. The plane only does this in certain profiles, so we are a little baffled. We'll be in touch with the team at MT Propeller, who custom made our prop and should have more answers soon.
This is all part of the process when you build something as extreme as the Turbine Toucan. If we can solve this challenge, we have only profiling and fuel management work ahead. In all, the program is doing nicely, but it would sure be nice to rest what little brain cells we have left. Have a great 4th of July!!!!!
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