Real World Solutions, Inc

Home of RA Classic Apex Seals and RA Super Seals

Editorial: The Game

By Tracy Crook. Originally published in the Rotary Aviation News, Issue 6, 1997

Laura tells me I am terribly intolerant of other people’s choices of leisure activities. Not much use in arguing with her about it because for the most part, she is right. Not intolerant in the sense that I don’t want them having the freedom to do them, it’s just that I can’t imagine why they would want to.

Several times during this past week the front page of our local newspaper has been dominated by news about local sports teams. One giant headline was printed above a full color, quarter page picture of a dump truck unloading reddish colored dirt. “POUR IT ON !!!”, the headline read. What was the story which lead to this outpouring of editorial enthusiasm? It seems the dirt was a very special variety from Alabama and it was being dumped on the new local baseball field. The accompanying article gave details about how many tons were being used and exactly where it was to be placed on the diamond. I read this with an odd mixture of disbelief and an increasingly familiar feeling that The Body Snatchers had replaced the earth’s entire population with aliens while I wasn’t looking.

By now you have probably guessed that I am not a baseball fan. What little I know of the game I learned from conversations overheard at work. The object is apparently to hit a ball with a bat but paradoxically, people get really excited when - NOTHING happens. A no-hitter, I believe it’s called.

I managed to maintain my normal Zen-like composure when I encountered the Alabama dirt picture but a few days later during my morning paper and coffee ritual, I lost control. There on the front page was an even larger picture of a man passionately stroking a pile of astro-turf.

In a momentary departure from the spirit of respect I have for the diversity of human endeavor, I muttered something like “ What on God’s earth could bring people to such crushing mental poverty that they would be interested in such drivel?”. At least that’s what I thought I said. Laura claims it sounded more like, “ WHO THE HELL CARES ! ” after which she looked over at me and said, “Ahhh, just another relaxing morning with the Otter” (her name for me).

A comment like that is usually all it takes to bring me back to a larger perspective on life. I started thinking about how absurd my own interests would look to an impartial observer. Here I am, retired after many years of planning and looking forward to sitting back and living life at a relaxed pace. But instead of that I find myself working harder than ever on some obscure little engine that the rest of the world could care less about. And doing it for no pay! Silly, no?

After giving the subject considerable thought, I concluded that there is a powerful need in man to be passionately involved in something. If that thing isn’t work then something else must be found. In short, we are all compelled to play The Game.

I was still thinking about this during a recent return flight from Shady Bend after working on the new fuel injection. About 20 miles north of my home airport in Clearwater is a large golf course. There were unusually large crowds and TV crews watching the progress of some obviously important match. Looking down, I could clearly imagine the TV commentator breathlessly describing the drama as some world famous golfer prepared to hit his ball toward a little hole in the ground.

Suddenly I felt the need to get this mental image out of my head. I pulled the nose of the RV up into a barrel roll. Looking through the top of the canopy at the ground below, I said a silent prayer. “If I must play the game, thank you for letting it be this one”.

Anybody Out There?

Readers frequently ask me if there are many others flying the Mazda rotary. You understandably want to hear from others besides me who have done this. I don’t have a comprehensive list but admittedly, there are not many. The next question is usually, ‘Why not?’. More than one perspective rotary user has commented that my results and the apparent ease with which I achieved them sound too good to be true. If it works so well, how come everyone isn’t flying rotaries?

I mentioned some of the reasons back when I wrote my first article for Kitplanes a few years ago. It should come as no surprise to readers of this newsletter that there is a large ‘cultural bias’ in the homebuilt community in favor of conventional aircraft engines. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen eyes roll at just the mention of auto conversions.

The other factor is the amount of work required to get a rotary (or any auto conversion) flying. Make no mistake about it, there are dozens of problems that the user of a Lycoming or Continental never has to think about. But, very few of these problems have anything to do with the suitability of the rotary to power an aircraft. They have more to do with the fact that most every piece of hardware needed to fly the conventional engine is an off the shelf item. The auto conversion user will have to design, fabricate and test a daunting array of fittings, brackets, mounts, adapters, ducts, cowlings and on and on. Contrary to what you may hear from some of the commercial vendors, there is no such thing as a true firewall forward package for any auto conversion engine at this time. A lot of details are still left for the builder to figure out.

Another factor is that for better or worse, experimenters tend to be rabid individualists. Many of us insist on re-inventing the wheel when it comes to implementing all the systems required to install an engine.

You should also remember that although people have been talking about rotary conversions for a long time, it is only within the past 5 years that a significant number of builders have committed time and money to the effort. Five years is about the average time it takes to finish a homebuilt so it is only recently that some of them are preparing to take to the air.