New turbo raven

[RarebearFan77]

Re: New turbo raven

According to the TurbineToucan's website, it has a 1.5:1 thrust to weight ratio. I can NOT wait to catch the Toucan at an airshow. I remember how blown away I was with the Turbo Raven. This should really be wild.

[Toucan]

Re: New turbo raven

Greetings zeke,

Thanks so much for the good questions. FAI records are in the works, and you are right that there are several classes to look at. C-1B and C-1C for turboprop is our area, we can fit into either, and depending on how much fuel we take onboard.

To answer your question about thrust to weight ratio, we are about 1:65:1 with a 100” four blade custom made MT propeller. The Sukhoi’s or any recip at best might be close to 1:1. As for comparison, we should have very similar performance to Wayne Handley’s Turbo Raven. Wayne actually worked with us and provided very good input from day one with the Turbine Toucan.

As for greater lift from a biplane, it is an interesting question. We have more drag then a monoplane for sure; we also have a great deal more wing area. Depending on rate of climb and profile, drag won’t be that big a deal if we are at high angles of attack and slow, but would be a big factor at higher speeds. With as much excess thrust as we have, it should be very interesting. A lot to work going on in this area for us.

There have been so few turboprops produced for several reasons. The kind of maneuvers one can do in a turboprop are very different than Unlimited aerobatics, and since many airshow performers come from IAC competition background, it would be like going backwards in limitations. The Turbo Raven and Turbine Toucan are specialty-oriented performers.

Overall cost and operational costs are darn close to outrageous. The Turbine Toucan and Turbo Raven were designed from day one for Fortune 500 sponsorship, unless you have unlimited funds it is expensive to operate. The planes themselves are more then twice the cost of a new Extra/Edge and burn 60gph during airshow performances. Cross Country travel alone is about 3x the cost to moving your typical aerobatic monoplane around the country. Turboprop components are also VERY expensive.

As for a comment I heard earlier in the posts, there has been several turboprop aerobatic aircraft, so we are nothing new really, just different.

One of the very first was back in the 70’s; a Bucker Jungmeister with an Allison C17 turboprop, which only produced about 300hp, similar to today’s Pitts. This was followed by a Turboprop Great Lakes, which again had the Alison engine with same hp. At the time, this was a LOT of performance, but it does not really reach to the mark of better then 1:1 thrust to weight. Wayne Handley really broke the mold in creating a positive thrust to weight ration aircraft, which has VERY similar numbers to the Turbine Toucan. Then as you mentioned there is the turbo shark, which we don’t really know all that much about.


People forget that the T-34C Beechcraft Mentor, the Pilatus series (PC-7, PC-9 and PC-21), the PZL Orlik ll, the Toucano and I’m sure there are a few I am missing that are all aerobatic capable, though they were used primarily for ACM.

[spacegrrrl]

Re: New turbo raven

Watched the Turbo Shark video. The way he is flying it certainly is nowhere near as exciting as the Turbo Raven was. Other than occational stints of high climb rate and the glider towing it was pretty standard stuff.

The Toucan seems interesting. Can't wait to see it perform!

Michele

[zeke]

Re: New turbo raven

Thanks for all of the info.

I have watched Pc-9's do aerobatics displays and they are quite impressive, especially in the the verticals. Also in a display combined with a P-51 and I would say that outside of top speed I would pick the Pc-9 to be better than any warbird in aerobatics, flight envelope, sustained G's, dogfights etc (but I do love the sound of the warbirds).

With your aircraft it takes it up a level higher with a smaller lighter aircraft with much better thrust to weight.

I recall some comment about Turboprops not being suited to unlimited aerobatics. I personally love what those aircraft can do, but not to sure if I would actually want to be in the aircraft doing all those snap rolls and high negative g maneuvers. That's the reasons why I like aircraft
like yours, very aerobatic in the normal sense of the word but more focused on performance than tumbling gyroscopics and cartwheels. In Climb rate, Acceleration (once the turbine spools up) and Speed the Toucan would be one great performer compared to anything out there.

I hope you can get some good sponsorships to pay for all the fuel bills and maintenance. If you look at it as the next step up in performance is a jet fighter with an afterburner the costs might not seem to bad.

The Turbine Toucan (& former Turbo Raven) have the best thrust to weight ratios for any Prop & Turboprop aircraft, and it is better than most of the Modern Jets. Do you know, or anyone else, the best thrust to weight ratio of a piston aircraft or for a jet aircraft. I'm guessing it would be either an aerobatic aircraft or one of the reno racers for a prop, and for a jet one of the Flanker versions or the F-22. It would be interesting to know if the jets are much better than your own aircraft in the ratio.

How is it calculated? As in there are figures in either metric or imperial, pounds, kilograms, horsepower, kilowatts, kilo newtons, empty, dry, maximum weight etc. If it's a straight pound for pound it's obvious but often on aircraft specifications it doesn't say it that way and gets confusing trying to compare it properly.

[Toucan]

Re: New turbo raven

Thank you, I think you get what we are all about. We are not about gyroscopics and tumbles. Though they have their place, we have a different philosophy. We want to do elegant beautiful swoopy maneuvers, something like what Bob Hoover used to do. Everything happens so fast with so much frenetic energy with unlimited type aerobatics that a lot can be lost in translation. What happened to an elegant display that truly showed off the lines of the aircraft?

Thrust to weight ratio is just that. If you know the thrust output vs. aircraft weight with fuel and pilot is it an easy calculations. Really a very good question. People like to use empty weight which is marketing hype and very misleading. When you add fuel, pilot, parachute and all the other required stuff, it adds up. Our calculations are based on airshow weight. This includes pilot, fuel and everything required to safely make a 15 minute performance.

To help illustrate the thrust to weight ratio fact, we like using the F/A-18, as it is a popular aircraft. At fighter mission weight, the F/A 18 has a thrust to weight ratio of .87:1. The F-15 which has one of the best thrust to weight ratios of the fighter class is something like 1.2:1 if memory servers. The Turbine Toucan has a 1.65:1 thrust to weight ration. Now, we’re not fast, and we’re not supersonic but we do have acceleration that beats just about anything. And as for propeller driven aircraft, it has the greatest thrust to weight ratio of an general aviation aircraft in the word. And for a little contrast, a 747-400 has a .27:1 thrust to weight ratio. So there you have it.

[Toucan]

Re: New turbo raven

Exciting news from the Toucan Team; we have slowly started introducing aerobatics/unusual attitudes into our test regime. The airplane saw extreme angle of attack attitudes (75%+ deck angle) at very slow speeds. We then brought in the power and was able to accelerate out of high alpha to between 3500-4000fpm maintaining the same deck angle. This is all in an effort to work into hovering and accelerating out of the vertical, so we are on track.

Lots of traditional maneuvers have been explored, and the control harmony of the plane is better than we have expected. We’ve been as fast as 200kts straight and level cruise so we are creeping up on the speed.

We have had 12 squawk free flights and have now introduced the entire fuel system. The duration of flights is now well over an hour. Our next venture is to go up high and establish all the at altitude profiles for the plane before we close out the phase one test flights. We are quickly rounding up on 40 hours, so we’ll be able to return to SQL in about another week. Then it is off to exploring the potential of the aircraft.

[hattend]

Re: New turbo raven

Toucan,

Are you on the schedule at Reno? (please please please)

Don

[Toucan]

Re: New turbo raven

Don,
Not at the moment. It would be fun to do a few laps. We haven't started our airshow program yet, so it would most likely have to be a static display if we were invited. We'll see, just been so focused on test fly that we didn't want to commit to anything. Thanks for asking!