Adept Airmotive’s V-6 Aims For Certification

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Adept Airmotive says it’s about to embark on a certification plan for its V-6 engine, which it’s showing in the AirVenture Innovation Center at Oshkosh this week. “The certification timeline for us is roughly two years and we hope to have the first certified aircraft out in 2017,” said Adept Airmotive’s Richard Schulz, in this exclusive podcast recorded at AirVenture. “We’re at a point in the certification program where we can talk to the airframe manufacturers and we’ve had extremely positive responses from two people in the United States,” he added. One of those companies, which Schulz declined to name, is partnering on a cert project with Adept.

On display at AirVenture, Adept’s V-6 model is a 3.2-liter 320-hp dual-overhead cam design with electronic, direct-fire coil ignition and electron fuel injection. Fully configured for installation, it weighs 320 pounds. Schulz said a smaller version, 230-hp, is also in the works, as is a 350-hp variant. The engine is geared and can run at 2300 or 2700 RPM to suit the application. The gearbox has a cush drive and an anti-backlash mechanism to protect the engine in the event of a prop strike.

The system is designed to keep the driven gear fully engaged at all times, so there’s no damage or wear caused by load reversals, which is common in geared engines if the prop drives back through the gearbox. Schulz said the engine is both shorter and narrower than gasoline aircraft engines currently on the market. The Adept engine has dual ECUs and knock sensing, so it can burn fuels as low as 89-octane. It also has automotive-style closed-loop oxygen sensing, so leaded 100-octane fuel won’t be a good choice. But the engine is designed to be ethanol compatible. For more, see AdeptAirmotive.com.

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