Yeh, well it's been going on for a long time.

They were very popular with the homebuilt airplane crowd in days past.
These days there has been a proliferation of small engines designed
specifically for the small homebuilts and the Ultralite aircraft. One
aircraft, called the Mini-Imp, designed by Molt Taylor, was a really
highspeed performer. I think it did about 140 mph on a little VW engine.
It was a little machine with a cantilever wing (no wing struts. Internal
structure was self supporting), retractable landing gear. The engine was
in the front and the propeller was in the rear at the end of the
fuselage. It pushed instead of pulled the plane through the air. A long
shaft that connected the engine to the propeller passed between the two
seats. Made life very interesting. One thing of particular interest to
me. The shaft passed into a clutch of sorts just in front of the
propeller. The clutch was filled with sttel balls, like ball bearings.
At idle, the propeller was motionless, but when the power was applied to
the engine, and engine speed increased, the load on the clutch locked
the steel balls making the shaft to the propeller solid, and the
propeller would turn. Wonder if we could apply that principle to some
Van project somehow!?

Regards,

John Rodgers
88 GL Driver

Greg Stelz wrote:

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>In fact, the aircooled VW
>engines are used in homebuilt aircraft.
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>Wow!!  That takes some serious balls. LOL
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>Greg
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