D-36 Ukraine Plane

At take-off power (sea level, static, ISA):
Thrust, kg(f)	6500
Specific fuel consumption, kg/ kg(f)-h	0.350
Air flow rate, kg/s	260
By-pass ratio	5.6
Overall compressor pressure ratio	20.0
TIT, K	1450
At maximum cruise power (H=8000m, Mfl=0.75, ISA):
Thrust, kg(f)	1600
Specific fuel consumption, kg/kg(f)-h	0.620
Overall dimensions, mm:	3469x1541x1711
Dry mass, kg	110

The world's most powerful helicopter engineThis turboshaft engine was designed for the Mi-26 twin-engined transport helicopter. Both the engine and the helicopter are by an enormous margin the most powerful and most capable in the world. The engine's derivation from the D-36 "enabled production to be achieved quite rapidly". Bench testing started in 1977, and series production at the Motor Sich plant began in 1982. According to Mil, by 1999 a total of 280 Mi-26 helicopters had flown, though in 2001 Ivchenko-'Progress' gave the total number of D-136 engines in service as only 470. In 2001, writing as if it was one of his engines, Vyacheslav Boguslayev of Motor Sich gave the number produced as "about 500".

The engine is listed by Motor Sich as a past rather than current programme, although small numbers of Mi-26 helicopters continue to be exported, the most recent (2006-7) being three Mi-26T multirole transports for Venezuela.The D-136 is composed of 10 modules, each of which (except for the main module) can be removed and replaced without disturbing neighbouring modules on an installed engine. Five of the gas-generator modules are identical with those of the D-36.

Folding Plane

A California startup revealed an aircraft

on Wednesday evening built for an increasingly popular new kind of pilot—the weekend aviator with a jones for expensive toys.

Loaded with features like folding wings (so you can keep it in your garage) and seat belt-like parachutes (so you can ease the whole thing down to the ground), ICON Aircraft’s new light sport airplane (LSA), dubbed the A5, might just be the ultimate joyride.

“We designed it so that people who don’t know airplanes know that something has changed,” Kirk Hawkins, ICON’s chief executive officer, told Popular Mechanics.

What’s changed are federal regulations, which created a new form of airplane and a new kind of pilot licence that requires less training and no medical check to obtain. The Federal Aviation Administration created the Sport Pilot category in 2004, but only now are players large and small entering this virgin market. At the “Sun ’n Fun Fly-In,” an aircraft festival held in Florida earlier this year, manufacturers showcased 75 LSAs, up from just 20 in 2006.

For ICON, reaching new customers meant a design that borrowed heavily from automobile marketing. “The product has to have sex appeal and be aesthetically inspirational,” Hawkins says. “It not only has to perform well, it has to look like it performs well.”

ICON faced another design hurdle in ensuring that aspiring pilots were not cowed by the risks of flight. The A5’s cockpit gauges look like they belong on a sports-car’s dashboard, while curved structures guard against accidental contact with the propeller whenever the plane is on the ground. Perhaps most crucial to this goal is that increasingly common parachute: no delicate maneuvers are necessary if the airplane is distressed—it can simply float to the ground.

Engineers at ICON also built the A5 to be a lot less of a hassle than other small aircraft, allowing owners to have a lot more fun. The wings can fold for storage in a large garage, and the airplane even comes with its own trailer. Amphibious models have platforms that connect to docks or piers. Versions of the A5 that can’t land in water will have automatic, rather than manual, folding wings.

Hawkings isn’t shy about his attempt to make flying small airplanes the luxury motor sport of the 21st century. “The passionate consumer will not use these to get to grandma’s house quicker,” he says. —Joe Pappalardo