Turbine Pilot: A special section for the turbine owner-pilot
Turboprop turnaround
Special mission sunset
A Textron/Beechcraft Special Mission King Air 350ER circles over Maryland’s Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.
Where: Cambridge, Maryland
Photographer: Mike Fizer
Exhibitors at the annual National Business Aviation Association convention do their best to hawk their latest product offerings, however big or small these contributions may be in the grand scheme of things. But at the latest convention, held in November 2015, a truly game-changing development was revealed. General Electric announced that its new H80 turboprop engine has been selected to power Textron’s upcoming single-engine turboprop. We are promised a look at the prototype of this new airplane at this year’s EAA AirVenture. Textron is pretty mum about it. It’s being designed for a maximum cruise of 280 knots, a maximum range of 1,500 nautical miles, and may have between eight and 12 passenger seats. That’s it for details!
GE has been hard at work on its new engine, which we are told will be part of a family of new turboprop powerplants. This has been a long time coming. In 2007, GE bought the Czech-based Motorlet Co., makers of the Walter series of turboprop engines. The H80 is based on the Walter M601 engine, and it should be rated at 1,300 shaft horsepower. Other derivatives could reach 2,000 shp. In all, GE has spent some $400 million on this effort. The intention: overturn the Pratt & Whitney PT6’s unchallenged 50-year hold on the turboprop market.
Like the PT6, the H80 will be a reverse-flow engine. But instead of using fuel nozzles, the H80 will use a slinger design to feed fuel into the combustion chamber. Its compressor design will produce almost double the pressure ratio of comparable turboprops; the engine will have a 20 percent better fuel burn, 10 percent more power, and be controlled by a single-lever FADEC that controls both engine and propeller, according to GE. To start it, just push a button.
“I don’t think anyone has trouble starting a PT6,” said Pratt & Whitney Canada President John Saabas. But Pratt isn’t sitting still; it promises a new engine to compete with GE. Things could get interesting by 2018, when the new engine’s first run is scheduled. —Thomas A. Horne, Turbine Pilot Editor
