"Peter Duniho" wrote in message ...

For experimentals, it sounds like (from one of George's earlier posts) that
people ARE looking to incorporate small turbines into light airplanes, but I
doubt it's cost effective. As near as I can tell, for a given horsepower,
turbines are simply more expensive and for sure it's harder to find someone
qualified to work on them.

Maybe one day they'll be ubiquitous in a wide variety of applications, and
they'll start showing up in light airplanes too. But it seems to me that
until there's a huge market for certificated low-horsepower turbine engines,
no one's going to bother working on them.

Pete

I know there's been an RV-4T - they grafted a turboprop onto the front
of an RV-4. I think the biggest problem they had (besides fuel
consumption) was that they didn't mount the exhaust stacks right, and
it "backed up" a bit in the engine.