You guys are totally freaking out over these prices! Forget about it! You can buy a Pitts S-1C for $15k!!!

Before his death in a motorcycle accident, Leo Loudenslager was building an aircraft that was intended to have a greater than 1:1 thrust to weight ratio. The airplane now resides in the EAA Museum in Oshkosh, WI. It's called the Shark. I don't have pic, and there's no direct link or info about it on the EAA website.

The issue with nitrous use in aerobatic aircraft is that nitrous would blow these engines apart. They're not build like car engines in that the tolerances are quite loose. These engines are designed for hours of use at 3,000 rpm or less, with very little throttle variation.

The issue with turbo or superchargers is that they add a considerable amount of weight. They also will increase the pressures inside the engine, which again shortens engine life dramatically.

The engines used by today's top aerobatic pilots don't get flown all the way to their 2,000 hour overhauls. They're normally removed and replaced looooong before that time for safety considerations.

Someone else mentioned using a two-stroke engine. It's true that you can get more power to weight with a two-stroke engine, but at the cost of high rpms. In order to keep the propeller within an effecient operating range, you'd have to run a gearbox of some sort. Again, the added weight negates the benefit.

Which leads to another problem... Prop diameter. The bigger the prop, the longer the landing gear. The longer the landing gear, the higher the weight...

Oh, and I do believe that the Turbo Raven was a highly modified Giles G-200. I could be wrong about that, though.

There's no doubt in my mind that someone will be on the airshow scene in the future with a piston-powered airplane that is truly able to hold a hover. It's only a matter of time.

-Wayne