Vtwin news and more Merlin deliveries

Starting with Vtwin installations:

Almost these photos are of the Vtwin being installed on Merlin at Tech Pro Aviation. The firewall forward package is pretty much done! Welding jigs and cowl molds finished. In 2 weeks I will be in Czech controlling and checking this work and inspecting the next 6 Merlins getting ready to ship plus checking on the assembly of the first two Merlin Lite aircraft. One will be Polini-powered and the 2nd will be electric. We will be making bench tests of the new electric power system as well.

The last photo above is a customer Vtwin installation.

We have a batch of reduction drives shipped 2 weeks ago from India. Tracking shows they moved from one part of the post office to another part today. Still in India but looks like they got tired of walking around them and decided to send on their way.

Some Vtwin news: We have 19 in our warehouse and one arriving tomorrow to Dayton. When running the engine there are some idle issues as the ECU is programmed to idle without any load. On an aircraft there is the reduction drive and propeller load even at idle. We need to tune the ECU for this. We have ordered the software and a cable to make this action. We have a test stand, prop, and redrive all ready so after the show I will return to Dayton and complete this new ECU mapping. Then we can get busy shipping engines!

This Thursday the Midwest Expo starts so tomorrow I will drive a Merlin quick-build kit to this show and hand it over to the customer.

Container day! 4 Merlins, a set of 1450 amphibious floats, and some smuggled Slovak beer. Good thing too, gets pretty hot inside those containers. Already delivered 2 of the Merlins. Plus one to the Mt Vernon show, and one stays in Dayton for a build program.