FAQ’s

For propellers, all types. For helicopter rotors, all rotor types. For fan blades, we apply to all existing fan blade designs on front fan engines, with bypass ratios of greater than 2.3.

No, we are additive to current designs. We take your propulsion blades, and improve them.

Depends. For our demonstration on a propeller, it takes about 15 minutes to show the change. The STC installation takes considerably longer, but it is done in-situ. After installation, we require at least a 12 hour curing before operation in adverse weather conditions. The fan blade demonstration installation takes around 1 hour, allowing for coffee breaks. It takes longer to remove the modification. The fan blade STC is also able to be done in-situ, we prefer to have the blades removed and then reinstalled, for a similar installation time of approximately 1-hour per engine, (from 16 to 40 blades). Refurbishment of fan blades can be done in place, we prefer removal of the blades for this task. To completely remove the modification, the blades are required to be removed from the engine, and the work is done in the local area. Complete removal will take approximately 12-hours.

The crew will have lower targets for N1 for the takeoff and for go around to achieve certified performance levels. For EPR controlled engines, the crew will have similar EPR targets, they will notice that the N1, N2 and N3 if applicable is lower than the standard engine to achieve the same performance.

No. The engine is operated at lower RPM at all times for the same thrust output.

No. The aircraft is quieter, but we are not certifying a quieter stage at this time.

We are certifying the compliance with the existing performance of the aircraft. Enhanced takeoff performance for hot and high airports will be certified when funded fully, and will be an additional cost to the operator.

The modification is an “on condition” item. The existing preflight inspections cover the check of the blades. Maintenance visual inspection at A checks or annual inspections will be required to confirm general condition.

Our staff will conduct all installations. The operator will be given a statement of the installation in accordance with the STC, and will make entry to the technical log of the engine, propeller, and aircraft. All rectification and refurbishment will be done by our staff.

We quote what we demonstrate. It appears large, and it is. What it will be on any given engine is dependent on design considerations related to the engine, but the lowest change we have ever achieved, is 12.2% TSFC improvement, and that was with a worst case set up. The demonstration on the CFM56-3 engine with a mild modification gave 30.3% improvement in flight, without being optimised, on the first flight. Our own jet achieves over 1/3rd reduction. It should be noted, that the effect we achieve increases with TAS, the static case is the least change, it can be seen to increase from 50 -130 KCAS on the ground, and at high Mach number, the effect is greater than at low speed. This is consistent with the physics of the modification we are making.

The standard turbofan engine loses component thrust from the fan as it increases speed. That is a certainty. The modified engine increases efficiency relative to the standard engine case, as it is not affected by speed increase to the same extent as the standard engine. This is Newton’s 2nd law in practice.

We do not charge like Airbus or Boeing; we are not selling our technology to anyone, we are providing the STC, installation, support and monitoring on a lease contract. The operator pays deltaBurn a component of the savings that they have made, after the savings have been made. We are able to determine the change, and as the difference in fuel burn is around 1/3rd of the total burn for a given flight, we are not overly concerned with measurement accuracy, we don’t need a micrometer, we can measure with a fire axe.

Only a couple of organisations have come forward to assist us in expediting the program to the community. We have had many discussions with the “big” airlines, and their responses are indicative of the problems that our industry have. Those airlines that have been briefed and have decided to greenwash away, will be at the bottom of the squirrel cage, so, they can hurry up and wait their turn. We will run out STCs as we are able to afford within our existing JVs and funding, that is the reality of having an industry that really is moribund, while lamenting their lot.

We have been able to do this as we are grounded in experimental flying. We did not consider that the change that we tested was impossible, we just went out and did it. The effect was greater than we were expecting, not less, and in fact that led to some time working out why 150 years of institutional development has had blinkers on.

At idle, the difference is less. We do have a paradox for operations at low temperatures, at sea level, for very short runways, that being that while we are able to increase the thrust of the engine by well over 30%, for this case, as the RPM is lower than standard to achieve the rated thrust, and we have not altered any aspect of the core of the engine, then the fan has to either make up more thrust than is normally the case to offset the lower core thrust, or we maintain the same fan thrust, and have slightly lower core thrust than the standard engine. This results in equal load on the thrust bearing, but has an additional slightly lower total thrust, unless the engine was rated with higher fan loads. Is this an issue? No, it is a static thrust condition, above 40KCAS, there is no impact, and as the same flight is able to be conducted with 1/3rd less fuel weight on board, the performance margin is greater than the standard case anyway. It is noted in passing as a curiosity. The chart below shows what is happening. Once that is understood it simplifies understanding of the changes that occur to the AFM and TO performance pages.