Hi guys!

You have a cool discussion going on. I have joined the tests made for the FMT and took acouple of nice pictures. What is wrong with the engine?

First of all, it was delievered with a bad instruction, saying: change the pump, it is crap. change the starter-motor it is bs..... It comes with a certificate that it is test-run in the factory with a data-sheet about their test-run. But the cone on the engine was silver-polished metal. Never been hotter than 50°Celsius, so did they change the cone after test-run? Bet they won't.

Starting the engine was a night-mare and we never got more than 50.000 rpm out of the engine. The ECU didn't stop the pump after flameout, so we had nice smoking-system on the test-bench. Fuel was dropping out of the turbine-case after first run on kero, caused by a to small O-ring. Did I mention that the kero-pump is crapped, as it didn't work? Chnaged it to a Häusl-pump....

The temperature was definitely over 1000°Celsius during test-run, measured with a special sensor. Tail-cone was glowing in nice bright colours on a bright and sunny day, ECU didn't stop the engine. Is that enough? Oh no, you wanted to know why these turbines are dangerous, even if they still didn't kill anyone.

After these test-runs the engine was checked. The compressor-wheel was grinded on a very bad/unsafe spot. The turbine wheel has the "balance-ring" to grind during balancing. Problem is, that the chinese guys grinded the turbine-wheel just next to the blades. Now that is dangerous! And nobody knows why they did it, because the turbine was not ballanced. We just had to open half of the screws, because the rest was already loose, caused by big vibrations during test-run. But that is not surprising. They didn't drill the whole in the center. It was more than 2/10th centimeter off.....

After all, it was not just impossible to run the engine or get it in the air. This turbine is dangerous, because the guys have just copied a WREN-turbine, without knowing what they are doing and how a turbine is working. You can buy a turbine, but you don't buy the experience the guys from WREN, CAT, AMT or PST have made over the years, when they developed their engines.

I hope this helps. It is not a translation of the test-review, but most of what is intersting...

Best regards,

David Büsken