April 9, 2004 - The first flight of a Swiss-built, Wankel-based rotary aircraft engine,
the turbocharged Mistral G-230-TS-B1A, occurred on April 4 aboard a
Piper Arrow III at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona
Beach, Florida. Mistral Engines of Geneva, Switzerland, developed the
230-horsepower engine. Early Mistral engines will be fueled by avgas
or mogas, but there are plans to develop a jet-fueled model. When
testing is complete, the firm plans to first offer 230- and 190-hp
models to the experimental aircraft community while certification is
in progress. More powerful engines are on the horizon. No prices were
announced, but there is an estimated 3,000-hour TBO. The Mistral
engine is similar in some respects to the Mazda rotary engine, a mount
homebuilders have experimented with for 25 years.
The first flight video is of terrible quality (see below). Excuse our video operator,
he is obviously much better with a wrench! - François Badoux
First Ground Run of a MISTRAL 2-rotor Turbo Engine
This is the first ground run of a MISTRAL 2-rotor turbo 230hp
engine on the company's test and demonstration Piper Turbo Arrow III
(N230ME). This "premiere" happened on Saturday March 27th 2004 in
Daytona Beach and was conducted by a joint team of MISTRAL Engines and
Embry-Riddle technicians.
Mistral is a Swiss company developing a new rotary engine to be fully certified for aircraft use.
They are working with Embry-Riddle to obtain US certification. If possible, Mistral will
fly the Arrow to Sun 'n Fun. Visit with them in the Rotary Engine Tent.
Click here to see the engine run.
This is a .WMV file of approximately 2 Mbytes. If you have trouble viewing it, try
right clicking and use the "Save Target As .." option to get a local copy.
First Flight of Mistral Engine
It happened Sunday 04/04/04 Our Arrow
went 3x around the runway at Daytona Beach International. The flights
went without a hitch, the temperatures were all in check, except during
a high-power run-up when the coolant temperature went too high. We
believe that was due to the fact that the aircraft was positioned
exactly perpendicular to a 15kt wind, generating some kind of
interference with the prop wash around the air intakes. The problem
didn't occur again during run-ups done into the wind or even facing
downwind.
Here is picture of a run-up test as the photos and video of the
first flights are no good. They took place at dusk, with the camera
operator pretty much facing the setting sun. Better pictures will
follow.
