Originally Posted by
Genghis the Engineer
As it's Australia, presumably either Recreational Aviation Australia, or (more likely) the Sport Aircraft Association of Australia, both of whom have CASA permissions to oversee amateur design/build/flight projects.
The
Supermarine Mk.26 aeroplanes went that route with some success. They developed V6 and V8 engines from automotive blocks also, which may be what this new project is using?
In the UK it would be the Light Aircraft Association or the British Microlight Aircraft Association - most countries have some similar structure.
G
Those are kit planes. Has this builder considered why the kit planes cost so much more than the custom job he's building? Maybe because the kit designer/manufacturer has done the (expensive) loads/strength analyses and gone through the (expensive) certification process for their kits? Once this guy is done with his build, he's going to have to pay someone to verify his loads/strength numbers, not to mention his build methods and techniques, and submit them to the airworthiness authorities before he can even
begin the certification process. And then he's got to complete the cert process. If he hasn't done a thorough job of documenting all the analyses and the build, he won't even be able to begin certification. None of this is quick and none of it is cheap. He may find that his "cheap" solution is way more expensive than the kit which has the advantage of spreading all those certification costs over multiple units. This guy might be producing a very detailed and "accurate" replica........of a non-flying Spitfire.
And about that V8. The GM LS series (Gen III small block) does not use a distributor. The photos of the V8 in this airplane has a distributor, meaning it is at best an LT series engine (Gen II small block). The LT has good performance, but not good durability. It was designed with a passenger car duty cycle in mind which spends 95% of its time at quarter throttle or less. A bad choice for an engine that must run continuously at higher throttle settings. It also has what appears to be a standard dual-bowl, double-pumper Holley carburetor. Again, good performance, but no carburetor heat, so a bad choice for an aero engine as it will tend to ice up. And will almost certainly be useless at zero G or less. There's a lot about this build that looks dodgy to me. But admittedly I'm thousands of miles removed and have precious little information to go on.