aircraft engine

Your engine talks to you—can you hear it?

Rotax Aircraft Engines has invited their worldwide flock to Wels, Austria, for some years. This charming town north of Salzburg is near the home of Rotax’s headquarters in Gunskirken. On three separate visits to Rotax, I was able to attend one of their Fly-in events, plus a special visit just for aviation journalists. Beautiful and […]

After dramatic footage spread like wildfire earlier this week of Dreadnought’s engine failure at the final National Championship Air Races at Reno, fans were fairly mortified. Some worried it could spell the end of the crowd-favorite racer that has chugged around the pylons at Reno for four decades.  Dreadnought, the flagship of the Sanders race […]

Question: I have heard that the regulation regarding the accuracy of fuel gauges in airplanes states they are only required to read accurately when the fuel tank is empty. This doesn’t make much sense to me, and I couldn’t find it in the FARs. Is it true? Answer: You won’t find a reference in the federal […]

It’s been more than a decade in the making, but now the “upside down” DeltaHawk engine has arrived. The company announced Thursday that its DeltaHawk DHK180 piston powerplant—set to run on jet-A—has gained FAA type certification after a significant period of development. The liquid-cooled,180 hp., 4-cylinder diesel engine uses an inverted “V” configuration and mechanical […]

CubCrafters has never made an aircraft powered by a Rotax engine. Images accompanying this article portray their very first example using the 9-series engine in a model intended for production. Most of their factory pilots or dealers have never flown behind a Rotax. Yet Carbon Cub UL is also the first aircraft in the world […]

During 2023, in only three months, I’ve lost count how many airframe producers have told me a story that goes something like this… “We (some manufacturer) offer two 100-horsepower choices: a Rotax 912ULS (carbureted) and 912iS (fuel injected), plus the new 141-horsepower 915iS (fuel injected, intercooled). Yet everyone is ordering the 915.” More power always […]

Each one of these aircraft engines represented a break from orthodoxy, and each had a big impact on the world of personal flying.