Why are there no small turboprops?

"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.