Morgans wrote:

"Ron Wanttaja" wrote

Not necessarily a powerful endorsement. The engines have full-time,
professional maintenance technicians and are cheap enough that the
government
could replace them after a few flights.


Plus the fact that if one of them packs it in while in flight, they say,
"no big deal, We have more aircraft in the storage depot. They didn't
cost me anything."

There's a lot of difference between a

few dozen hours on an unmanned vehicle on a military maintenance
schedule vs.
thousands of hours on a non-professionally-maintained aircraft with a
pilot
aboard.


Add to that the fact that that many of the drones only have a life of a
few dozen hours. They shoot some of them down, even. They are all
expendable.


Which would logically put us right back on the ground again, ;(

But the engines are generally built to last more than a few dozen hours.

And if they are shooting them up, there are probably a lot of them -
somewhere...

This has been the dream of aviators since the Wrights (and before!)

a LIGHT(!) weight, powerful engine, that will compliment the aircraft's
mission specifications.

I got to play with a Garrett engine on a crop dusters this summer.
LIGHT weight and POWERful took on new meanings...
-=wow=-


I thought this was an interesting set-up: 90 hp turbine in a Zodiac...
http://www.zenithair.com/misc/turbine-power.html
pic 4?