He can’t pressurize it. He cracked one of the windows when he left the front jacked up one time. That’s another problem he’s going. To get to “fix’ during production.

I'm seeing chatter on another forum that his flight this morning ended in an emergency landing. Possible oil pressure or engine failure. From the sounds of it he made it, but not sure of the details.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N352TD

https://archive.liveatc.net/kvld/KVLD-F ... -1630Z.mp3

(Emergency declared at 14:30 of the recording)
(Lost engine around 16:30)

Actually... It runs diesel. Granted, diesel and Jet-A are close, but apparently, Jet-A lacks some lubricity that diesel has. This would shorten the life of the engine which is why he is running the engine on diesel. To burn Jet-A long term, you would need to dump in some additives whenever you fueled.

At least that how it was explained to me. Which if true means you just lost a little more payload since you're going to have to carry around whatever the additive is for when you refuel.

Been a number of piston aircraft certified to fly on Jet-A (for example Cessna JT-A and Diamond DA62) and I don't recall they required additives when fueling. Do they?

Mike C.

Been a number of piston aircraft certified to fly on Jet-A (for example Cessna JT-A and Diamond DA62) and I don't recall they required additives when fueling. Do they?

Mike C.

The lubricants are needed for Audi’s high pressure fuel pump, at least if you want it to last. That may not be an issue for a system designed to run jet A, and I would presume Peter could use a different fuel pump if one is available.

That's a major bummer.

Here is the FlightAware track.



It's clear that he did make the runway, but I never heard him say anything after he told the tower he lost the engine. Tower re-opened the field shortly after he declared and said he's lost the engine so it seems safe to assume he made a reasonable dead stick landing.

Glad Peter is Ok.

Jack

Hi Don,
Not true at all. Whoever told you that is still living in the 1970's

Been a number of piston aircraft certified to fly on Jet-A (for example Cessna JT-A and Diamond DA62) and I don't recall they required additives when fueling. Do they?

Mike C.

The issue with running Jet A in a turbo diesel VW engine is the sulfur. The high sulfur content will plug up the common fuel rail among other things after a bit.

You can run it 50/50 and not hurt it (one guy is closing in on 300k miles and hasn't touched a thing doing just that) but more likely you'll need to tweak the fuel system for Jet A. Probably have to re-work it completely. Doable, but you'll lose fuel economy doing it.

The older diesel trucks from the late 90's and 2000's (Cummins in-line 6) like Jet A just fine. The ones with the big smoke stacks sticking out above the bed belching more sulfur into the air than the dump truck in front of you.

Anybody get an update on Peter after today's flight?

I doubt he'll ever get pressurization to work at anything more than a couple PSI (good for a 8000 ft cabin at 12,000 ft). Besides that it's very likely he knows nothing about the subject plus the fact that the shape of his cabin is completely wrong for a pressurized vessel leads me to believe that getting up to a useable 5+ PSI cabin pressure differential without adding another 500 lbs of structure simply isn't feasible.

It will be interesting to see what happened. Those high temperatures he wasn’t worried about may have caught up to him. I’m glad he got back safely to the ground.

My money is on the redrive.

I figure his “rattle” was a piston deconstructing itself because it was not fine with excessive egt temps which knowledgeable people tried to warn Peter about.

Hi Rich,
Sulfur is a problem for the aftertreatment, but airplane engines won't have that.
The fuel system doesn't care. Most industrial engine makers allow unlimited use on jet fuel.