shorrick mk2

Thank lord the barrel - head separations and cylinder cracks happen very slowly, imagine how that would be on a dark stormy night. An engine that needs 25h oil changes and 500h mag and cylinder changes to marvel at isn't exactly "cross mountains at night in a storm" reliable in my book.

135mph is the average speed over 24h, accounting for pit stops. When lapping it was run at 150ish mph (which is top speed) & 5200 rpm.

The engine wasn't at redline rpm, as top power is at 5200 rpm (below redline). Redline is never peak torque... especially not on turbo engines. Sea level is irrelevant as the engine is turbochaged. Was it at 100% power? If the book says 330Nm and 250HP at 5200 rpm, and they ran it against the speed limiter, signs point to yes.

For all the doubting Thomases - thirty years ago Volvo ran one of its stock S60 sedans for 24h at top speed, stopping every two hours to change drivers. So much for the "stock car engine setups cannot run at 100% power". https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.volvoclub.org.uk/press/pdf/S60LandSpeedRecord.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjF3ICv9bPnAhXiwsQBHftdBfQQFjAKegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw2-6AsQHQ5z224UtasNEW_l

There are other nice retracts out there. https://www.planecheck.com?ent=da&id=48047

They had 35 buses serving a few destinations in France for 2-3 years. Hardly anything like "ran France's buses". The whole european franchise was sold to Flixbus.

Stagecoach does not operate outside the UK anymore. Their European foray didn't last more than two years.

The Centurion aviation version of the MB engine is also pretty much bullet - proof. When is the last time you heard "top overhaul", "cam spalling", "magneto overhaul" etc etc from the Diamond crowd? Not that often. Not that often that we hear about their engines stopping in flight either (in fact thanks to ekectronic engine management Continental can now show you the up-to-date IFSD rate for their diesels and it is pretty impressive. If they were that bad they wouldn't have sold that many.

Same design as the Mercedes Benz OM668 that morphed into the Centurion engines, and these show by now a reliability avgas Lycontis can only achieve in a wet dream. Sure, you can't fix them in the field with a hammer and pliers, but if they don't fail... no need to :-)

Or you can put a diesel EPS on it (if they ever move past the "really final stage". https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2019/july/24/certification-for-eps-v8-diesel-in-progress

@Igor_U my point was that you don't need to recertify or redesign an airplane to incorporate automation, you can train / design the robot around it. As to the "no cost savings" part, both A and B financials show otherwise. Sure Renton is an assembly plant, but do you think the subcontractors all sit around milling parts by hand in a sweatshop? Sure, B had 60 years to improve the 737 production line practices... but so have the other guys. As to your volume & profitability exception for low rate productiion runs, have a look at Ferrari volumes & profitability pre and post product line automation... you'll be surprised. Don't be mislead into thinking that low volume plane sales is due to lack of people not having enough $$$ to spend.

Robots are now quite commonly used in airframe and wing assembly. Check out Boeing's Panel Assembly Line and Fuselage Automated Upright Build gadgets. The planes they work on have not been redesigned - the tech has been built up to fit the existing certified design.

I think in this day and age of cheap batteries and electric motors you could have one tiny battery exclusively dedicated to running the gear and one motor per gear leg and have a solution that is lighter, more elegant and more simple than the backspring clutch workaround.

For what it is worth, Continental has just certified a six cylinder turbodiesel that puts out 300hp at takeoff, runs up to 25k feet, has a 285hp continuous power rating, and is only 3kg heavier than the Acclaim TSIO-550. http://www.continentaldiesel.com/typo3/index.php?id=106&Year=2017&NewsID=186&L=1

A BRS will in effect make the current Ovations and Acclaims two-seaters by further eating into the payload. A BRS without proper landing gear and increased MTOW is throwing good money after bad. Donuts are cool and low cost - but surely in this day and age with the multitude of tiny powerful electric motors available one motor and proper strut per landing leg will be cheaper to buy and easier to build than the current solution. The question is how much will that cost versus how many airframes will be sold. And neither addition will solve the labor-intensive solution of building the plane around a hand welded steel tube cage. Keep in mind good second-hand DA42s are on the market at the Acclaim / Ovation Ultra price point and they have the best parachute - a second (reliable) engine.