*We don't update the web site very often. We get complaints about this. We know it is frustrating. Here's why we don't do it: the guy who updates the web page is also working on the prototype. He is working on the proto 7 days a week. At the end of any given day he has a choice of sleeping or updating the web site. Sleeping wins.
Current Update
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January 2009
Not dead, just busy. Really busy.
Among other questions that have appeared in the old e-mail inbox lately, someone wanted to know if the current economic situation had wiped us out, since we hadn’t updated this web site in four months. We looked at each other and said, “What the heck is this guy talking about—it hasn’t been four months since the last update . . .” and then we checked and yeah, it has been four months. All we can say is it SEEMED like we just updated the other day. No, not that other day, the other-other day.
(And here we will note that Steve does monitor and post to the Yahoo group a bit more often than we update this site. The Yahoo group is preferred since it is interactive and folks can get their specific questions answered instead of just having us shotgun information onto the web. Moral of the story—do please feel free to join the Yahoo group. Link is on the contacts page of this site.)
In the—yes—four months since we last updated we have been working on engines. That is ‘engines’ in the plural.
As most folks know, from first flight to now we have been using the 6 cylinder Jabiru. The Jab is an excellent engine and has almost every positive quality one could ever ask for in an airplane engine with one exception—we had a heck of a time getting it to cool. Really, really, really frustrating. One thing led to another (glossing over weeks of meetings and discussion here) and we decided to give another engine a shot.*
We worked with engine company X for most of the fall and we were well committed to trying their engine. Engine company X became an unexpected early casualty of the economic upheaval and suddenly we had to reset. No happy campers at Ion for a while.
Standing back a bit, we looked at the market and talked to a few likely customers and we decided to swallow some pride and try a Rotax 912S. It has three key virtues: It is lightest engine on the market for our weight class, it is well accepted in the market place, and—this is the biggy—it has liquid cooled heads. L. I. Q. U. I. D. C. O. O. L. E. D. That is a big deal to us.
The new Rotax arrived just at the end of November and we finished the new mount, plumbing and electrical at the end of December. We would be a bit faster off the mark but the holidays tend to slow things down and of course there is the annual ritual of getting some nasty virus. Twice.
At the moment—and by that we literally mean today—we are about ½ done fabricating a new cowl. Once the new cowl is on and looks pretty we will put up some nice photos.
So, talk to you again in four months . . . no no, that’s a joke. Three months, tops.
*We have not given up on the Jab, we have just put it on the shelf for a bit. If the Rotax can get us more hours in the air that will actually benefit the Jab, as it will give us more data to figure out local air flows and pressures to more effectively cool.
April 2009
This will be short and sweet, just to get a few bits of information out there and so forth:
- Work continues at an even more hectic pace than before. Why, why, WHY is Oshkosh always just around the corner?
- Rotax conversion has gone well, more information and photos to follow--most of the photos we have are installation details and not interesting to look at. We need some "beauty shots."
- We have had most of the meetings and most of the conversations we need to have to finalize the design for proto #2. This is exciting and something we look forward to, but it does mean that we have to actually start thinking about moving the couches out of the hangar so we can fit another airplane in.
- NOTE: To whoever started the internet rumor that we have been bought out by Northrop Grumman . . . it's news to us. How much did we get bought for and when did it happen? We're always the last to know.
- For your personal amusement and enjoyment, a 3D PDF of our new landing gear strut is below. If you have the current release of Adobe Reader you can open the file, click anywhere in the viewable field and it activates a whole bunch of neat 3D features. Screen shot of the PDF on the left, downloadable PDF on the right.
Just a few quick photos showing the new cowl and a shot of the new engine as it is installed. We will put up some notes to go with these photos in a bit, but we just wanted folks to see and marvel at the finished product. NOTE: The engine exhaust is not chromed--that is ceramic heat coating similar to what race cars use. It is wonderful stuff. The amount of radiated heat coming off the exhaust is MUCH less than an uncoated system.
June 2009
August 2009
Best. Oshkosh. Ever.
We will output some nice-sounding things to say about Oshkosh 2009 and go over the show highlights--later. For now suffice to say we had a lot of fun, the weather was (mostly) excellent, show attendance was up and folks loved the plane. More to follow after some very serious sleep, hangar cleaning and getting reacquainted with the dog.
In order to make this page load better, updates from previous years have been archived to their respective pages below.
