Though our test phase is over, we are now going to take a much needed look at how everything is working for us. This includes an extremely expensive look at the engine. We have put the engine in attitudes not usually seen in turboprop applications, so this is a mandatory part of our program. In most cases we would be very happy just doing a borascope on all the components of the turbine. But because of the need to see the root of the blades on the compressor side, we have decided to hire a specialist, split the case and have a look.
We also decided since we have the cases split, we’d do a dye penetrant test on varies components including the compressor wheel. We also inspect the hot section, bearings and gearbox. We'll post photos.
This will continue to be something we do annually to insure the health of the engine and safety for the entire team. Is it an expensive annual? You betcha! But, campaigning an aircraft like this is hugely expensive. Operating it at this level of safety makes it even more expensive.
Because this is an evolutionary process of development, we continue to make changes that increase safety and reduce workload. And as mentioned in the past few postings, we have redesigned the panel to reduce pilot workload and increase efficiency. That process is going well. All engine instruments are out of the panel and we are now getting ready to make the necessary modifications to incorporate the new glass panel. We’ll keep you posted on the progress and hope to be back in the air soon.
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If there were any reason for the timing of our annual this year, this picture pretty much says it all. We got up early to go down to the hangar and were surprised by the 8ft. high mound of dirt that wasn’t there the evening before. And I guess it is going to be with us for about a month. Still another month before we can actually taxi the plane out of this area.
I guess the upside is San Carlos Airport is getting 40 new hangars. Most are on the list 20 years before they get a hangar. And when you do, it was a week after you turned 70 and just lost your medical. We’re hoping we get one of these new hangars.
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This week represents a huge challenge for Infinity Entertainment Inc. As many know, we have been pursuing a Title Sponsor for the Turbine Toucan now for a few months, now that the test phase has been complete. In fact, the Turbine Toucan will not be campaigned at air shows until a title sponsor is locked, due to the extremely high operational cost of the aircraft and fixed costs.
It is with great sadness that we will not be attending ICAS this year. We have second round talks with a Fortune 1000 company that happens to land on Dec. 12th, right in the middle of the show. And as much as we want to lay the foundation with air show producers/organizers for the upcoming season, having a sponsor somewhat eclipses everything else.
We are very late in the sponsorship sales cycle for 2008, a lot of which happened because of delays with the test program over the past eight months. And as many will know, sales cycles for such sponsorships are very long. Our number one priority is making sure that the Turbine Toucan is properly funded from day one!
So, if you want to see the Turbine Toucan at an air show near you, keep your fingers, arms, legs and anything else you got crossed and throw a lot of good karma our way too!
We’ll continue to keep you all posted on our journey in this department, we have a lot going on. Continued happy holidays!
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Geee Whizzzz,
If the news about Quique becoming FAI’s F3A World Champion wasn’t enough, we just received some exciting video of the E-Turbine Toucan. We’ll upload the video on the site in the next week or so but in the mean time, check it out on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sUwup_5n7E
This is some exciting news! I’m sure Quique will keep us posted on the production kits coming out soon, so stay tuned!!!!
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I just uploaded a short clip of the Turbine Toucan, the bird is in its element, sort of speak. The take-off clip shows the Toucan with over 528lbs. of fuel on board which is more then twice what we'll carry on our time to climb record attempt (though we already broke the C-1C record by 40% on our first practice flight). The real magic will start to happen when Ken Erickson takes the Toucan through its paces in never-before-seen maneuvers.
We'll have the clip on our site soon enough but for now, please go to youtube.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swhSLbQHL74
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The entire Turbine Toucan team wishes you all a very Happy Holiday! We have decided that this was about the best time of year to bring the Turbine Toucan off-line for about six weeks time. We’re planning some general maintenance, an annual and most importantly, a panel upgrade. When complete we’ll have an all glass panel.
The Turbine Toucan is an extremely demanding airplane to fly, not in the sense of physically controlling the plane but monitoring various systems. As any Pitts driver will tell you, when you’re rolling out on take off your not looking in the cockpit. With turboprops, monitoring ITT, Torque, N1 & N2 is absolutely critical. So, it is something that is virtually impossible to do well in the current configuration.
With that in mind, we needed to create a more comprehensive, interactive solution to reduce workload on the pilot. With the new panel we’ll have aural annunciation of engine parameters as well as addition visual cues during the critical time, on take off roll and during aerobatics. We’re finding that telemetry alone is just not sufficient.
We all concluded that it was not a good idea to significantly change the panel half way through training for next year’s air show season, so we better do it sooner then later. When done, we’ll resume time to climb record attempts and start some extreme vertical maneuvers.
Over the next month or so we’ll keep you posted on our progress and post pictures of the new panel in progress.
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As we mentioned the other day, we are now just starting to play with profiles for our “official” FAI sanctioned time to climb attempt for both 0-3000m & 0-6000m. Butch Pfeifer and friend Debbie (serving with the Army as a flight engineer on the Chinook and heading back to Afghanistan next month) accompanied the Toucan down to King City to visit friends at Tutima Academy (formally Sean Tucker’s school of Aerobatics) on Saturday the 17th. King City is a perfect venue to climb straight out to 10,000ft without airspace/traffic issues.
Our first and only attempt was really just a practice and was done on our departure back to San Carlos. The Toucan was loaded with nearly 80 gallons of fuel, in a record attempt we might only have 30 gallons on board. Right off we were carrying 335 extra pounds, which makes a huge difference.
First time out of the gate we broke the C-1C class world record by more then a minute and a half! This was a best angle of climb attempt more then a time attempt for team Turbine Toucan. From take off to 10,000ft. we maintained a 75º deck angle, which doesn’t get us there nearly as fast but provides a lot of fantastic data in the process.
Airspeed was in the 80-90kt range all the way up. What was really fascinating after leveling off at 10,000ft in almost 2 minutes flat was that we never really left the airport. The toucan was just at the end of King City’s 4400ft runway when we arrived at our first destination in route to San Carlos.
The next attempt we’ll be keeping the airspeed up at about 120kts all the way up to 10,000ft and with only 30 gallons onboard. This should make a HUGE difference as we continue to get the time down. Still, today’s record broke the 35 year standing record of 3 minutes and 30 seconds by nearly 40% (at 2 minutes) not to bad for never leaving the airport! Team Turbine Toucan is VERY excited about the potential of this aircraft and today's practice reinforces our enthusiasm.
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Today we start working on our time to climb attempts, 0-3000m & 0-6000m in our FAI class of C-1C. We’ve moved our “official attempt” out a bit so a potential sponsor can leverage the attempt as well. None the less, we could break the world record as early as today.
As a recap, in 1972 the C-1C Turboprop 0-3000m time to climb record was set at 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Wayne Handley and the Turbo Raven (C-1B Class) set the 0-3000m time to climb in 1 minute and 9 seconds. Our aircrafts weigh about the same but we have just enough weight to put us in a different class. We potentially have a bit more thrust then the Turbo Raven but we also have more drag. That said, we also have 50% more wing area. Higher deck angle and slower speed (so drag has less influence) is the profile we are aiming at working out.
So, we can shatter the current 0-3000m C-1C (in class) record but breaking Wayne Handley’s record might be a challenge, but a challenge worth shooting for. I wouldn’t have considered an attempt on Wayne’s record and would have just focused on the C-1C class instead of the unlimited record if it were not for a nice conversation with Wayne. He was very supportive of me trying to break his record.
As for the 0-6000m time to climb record, that too was set in 1972 with a time of 7 minutes and 17 seconds. Again, the Turbo Raven did it in 3 minutes and 6 seconds. So, we also feel this attempt in C-1C class and not unlimited is easily beat and perhaps cut in half! At any rate, fun challenges for sure. We might have to wait a few days based on low ceilings but we'll go out and see what we can do. We'll report as soon as we have some good news on the subject.
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It has been six months since our first flight and almost two months since we have concluded the primary test phase of flying. And over the past six months I have reported as much as I could about the progress we have made. Of coarse, all the accounts of the actual flying have been second hand. The only team member to have had to live vicariously through his teammates.
The plane and team have been through an exhaustive test program over the past six months. Our number one commitment was to safety and insuring that every system had been methodically testes in various flight conditions. This took a great deal of discipline considering the temptation.
Every flight to date has been well thought out with very clear objectives and data to collect. Unfortunately, I was not one of those data collectors. And for good reason, I was not qualified. Dave Morss, Butch Pfeifer and Ken Erickson on the other hand are HIGHLY qualified. So, it feels kind of weird to be surrounded by all this talent and feel somewhat of an outsider on your own team. Mostly because they have experienced something I have not, flying the Turbine Toucan.
They also understood something I had not; unless you’ve flown the aircraft, words just don’t describe the experience. It was something unspoken but also something very clear to Dave, Butch and Ken.
Well, all that was about to change! Ken, Butch and I felt that we have the airplane and the program at a place that we can finally have a little fun. The amount of confidence they both had in the aircraft is what lead up to a very special event in my life. I get my first crack at flying the Turbine Toucan. Talk about gratification. Building it is one thing, flying it just completes the story nicely.
So, on Friday the 30th of October, I finally flew the little Toucan!
Without going into a lot of detail, WOW just seems so meager a word for the experience. The acceleration on take off is something close to 4 G’s, never experienced that kind of performance before. Perhaps equally impressive is the rate of decent one can do. While practicing for my first landing (at altitude) I was exploring decent rates when bring the power back to idle, which I typically do for short approaches in the Pitts when abeam the numbers. In order for me to hold best glide (100mph) with the power back, I was having to point the plane almost straight down. Last time I looked inside the cockpit, I was passing 4500 feet per minute decent to keep 100mph. Damn.
So much for my typical Pitts short approach. It’s a plane you bring in under power, about 120kts over the fence to be exact. Over the threshold you come back on the power to idle and in about a seconds time you are about 80kts and in the flair. Simply amazing.
What I found to be incredible is just how fast it can decelerate. Going from 180kts to 120kts when I was entering the right 45 only took a few seconds and boy did the harness snug up in a hurry! I thought I was going to be thrown out of the cockpit, which I’m used to, doing aerobatics not straight and level flying….did I mention all the left rudder it took to keep it straight when you come off the power? Sheeesh.
I’ll be writing a lot more about flying the Turbine Toucan as I practice our time to climb record attempts in the coming weeks. I’m sure the vertical performance will be a story worth reporting on. In the mean time, Ken and team will have a few exciting posts coming up next week.
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One of the most exciting parts of my job is sharing the Turbine Toucan with all of you. It is an exciting journey full of potential. And it is the realization of the potential that is so rewarding. Some of that gratification will just have to be delayed, not denied. As we’ve mentioned in our blog, Air show Buzz and several articles, we are excited about attempts to break not only a speed record but also two significant time to climb records.
We had originally planned on making these attempts over the summer but quickly learned that waiting until the weather got colder was a much better idea. Nice cold air will just give us the ability to generate more power, so the end of November was selected to make the attempts.
It was our original thought that obtaining these records would help with the endeavor of securing sponsorship. Most of the companies we have met with to date clearly understood our program and the aircrafts potential to shatter a few records. We have had very productive conversations with highly targeted potential partners, all which have been very encouraging, but that is for another conversation.
After considerable conversations with potential sponsors, one thing was quickly realized; anything newsworthy regarding the Turbine Toucan was of great value to our potential sponsor. In light of this, we have postponed any “official” speed or time to climb record attempts until our sponsorship is officially secured.
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As we might have shared on the website, Infinity Entertainment is committed to creating an experience for airshow fans that goes far beyond any single performance. Access to both the airshow aircraft, the support aircraft, to the team members and to the support equipment is a philosophy we are committed to once we hit the road.
Every other motorsport provides fans access to pit areas to see the crew, the support equipment, the transporter and of course the drivers. Why should airshows be any different? We’re not saying this doesn’t happen, it just doesn’t happen enough.
We observed over the years that at many airshows the performing aircraft are sequestered off the ramp where fans have little or no access to their favorite performer or aircraft and we think that is a shame. After going to a Champ CAR event a while back, it was clear how many fans were completely into being around the pit area. All the graphically wrapped tractor-trailers, support equipment and team members made for a very impressive event within an event.
It is this kind of access that really created another level of excitement at venue. And we took note! As part of our support equipment, we had two custom support carts built for the Turbine Toucan. One is a start cart; the other is for fueling/defueling and show smoke (which is a proprietary blend).
Pictured below is the new start cart. It carries a Tesla Industries GPU with 3500 cranking amps @28v, 20ft. GPU cable set, a 110v GenSet, Telemetry Computer and displays, support tools and cleaning equipment.
We’ll upload photos of the fuel cart as soon as it is done, which will be in about a month or so. We’ll also keep you posted on progress of the tractor-trailer. Obviously we are waiting as long as possible to get started as every potential sponsor needs are different regarding hospitality.
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Well,
Bad weather the past week has kept us all from doing any flying. But it hasn't stopped our trek for finding the perfect sponsor. Susan Cress has been working hard on targeting what we consider key CPG (consumer package goods) companies. What is key is finding the right brand that shares or is aligned with the Turbine Toucan's core brand attributes. It's a long sales cycle but an exciting one too. We've met some fantastic people who are extremely excited about the program. Though some have already earmarked budgets for 2008 season, they were very interested in the program, which is very encouraging.
Ken Erickson has been hard at work supporting Sean D. Tucker and team. They are getting close to winding down their season now, which will give Ken some time to work with the Turbine Toucan for next year's season.
Dave Kervinen is getting ready to work on a few time to climb records slated for Nov. 29th of this year. We are working out VX/VY numbers on paper and trying to determine a few profiles to go out and fly. Though we have a lot of drag, we also have a lot of wing area to utilize. So, keeping the speed down and the climb angle high is key. But, it's all theoretical until we just go out and do it ten plus times. More on this subject in the next few days.
Have a good weekend!
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We get a lot of questions about the support tractor-trailer, so we thought we’d share a little info. As soon as the trailer is done, we’ll have dedicated pages on the website for it, so stay tuned.
For any of you that are interested, our tractor is a fully loaded, CAT powered Kenworth T2000. The trailer is a 53’ Kentucky single drop air ride trailer with belly boxes. It has 4 hydraulic levelers, 25ft hydraulic side door for hospitality, spiral staircase to the roof (for the best seat in the house) along with a 40kw three phase generator. The trailer is also equipped with satellite uplink for high speed internet access, has 14ft crew/sponsor meeting room and a large area for spare/support equipment. The list goes on and on but you get the idea.
For the few that are interested, we’ll keep you posted from time to time on the progress
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Infinity Entertainment and Tjaart van Rooy of VR Avionics have been hard at work increasing overall performance of the Turbine Starter/Limiter monitoring system. In a few weeks time we will now have full In-Flight limiting of all parameters. This is a huge step forward for Team Turbine Toucan. When we are flying hard charging, low-level aerobatics, we are looking outside the cockpit.
Though we have crew monitoring trends on the ground and reporting any unusual trends to the pilot via a discreet frequency, it still requires pilot input to correct the exceedence. The latency in communication from the ground to the pilot might only be a few seconds, but that is a critical few seconds when you can overspeed N2 or have large spikes in ITT.
The new system completely eliminates pilot input for corrections, which greatly reduces pilot workload when high power and low altitudes are experienced.
Tjaart has also added significant telemetry interface updates for the ground crew. Now we can completely data log the entire flight. We can also display on a graph all engine parameters, which now give you graphical trend data in real-time. This allows us to play back historical data and map it with any particular maneuver to see what, if any effect it has on the Turbine.
This is really ground breaking technology for Turboprops! We can’t thank Tjaart and Maurits enough for the continued support; it is this kind of dedication and support that has made the project a reality.
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The sales and marketing department at Infinity Entertainment have been working feverishly to recruit the perfect partner (sponsor) to campaign the Turbine Toucan for the 2008+ airshow season. As you know, the Turbine Toucan was exclusively developed as the ultimate communication platform for a fortune 1000 company. We’ve had a lot of interest to date, which is very encouraging. The team has been doing a great deal of traveling in the pursuit, so we all apologize for not keeping the blog up to date in the past few weeks. We are again hitting the road for another week of travel and look forward to sharing as we move through the process.
Weather has been very weird around the bay area, not at all conducive for flying, which makes us feel a little less guilty. We’re hoping to do another photo flight before we get heavily involved in the exploration in the vertical. We’re still planning on working on several world records in November. We’re also in the planning stages for our promotional video, so we’ll keep you up to speed on that as well.
All for now, thanks for your continued support!
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