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Astounding Fuel Economy of DeltaHawk Engine Proven
In Comparison Flight Testing!
Racine, 11 May 2005: From the beginning a major advantage of the DeltaHawk engine was expected to be a significant improvement in
fuel economy and range compared with the gasoline engines currently used by Experimental and General Aviation. Until now these claims have been based on engineering assumptions and educated guesses.
Over the last two months a series of flight tests using nearly identical Velocity airframes has gathered fuel consumption data at
various altitudes and airspeeds. One of the test aircraft is powered by a DeltaHawk DH160V4 Heavy Fuel engine (burning Jet-A) and the other by a Lycoming* IO-360 burning 100LL aviation gasoline. Both Aircraft are
turning identical Aymar-Demuth fixed pitch props. Various comparison charts resulting from the testing are posted following this article. However, to cut to the chase and point out just one amazing statistic – at 145 KTAS and 11,500 feet MSL the DeltaHawk is burning only 3.81 GPH or more than 36% LESS fuel than the IO-360. This by itself is Huge News, but examination of the full range of data gathered shows
similarly favorable results in all flight regimes.
To head off the nay sayers at the pass we offer the following explanation – Yes, the IO-360 was leaned in accordance with accepted
practice and NO, the data is not corrected for standard conditions, BUT the pressures during the 11,500 foot flights were within .25 in Hg and the temperatures within 3° C of each other. Correction to standard
conditions will not dramatically alter the results. The bottom line is that a DeltaHawk engine can be expected to decrease fuel
consumption of a gasoline powered airframe by 30 to 40%, while increasing range almost 60%.
Click picture for larger graph in pdf
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