The pursuit of perfection, with Michael Goulian

You mentioned the Extra 330SC and some of these modern airplanes, which are really incredible machines.

What is it about those that unlocks this next level of aerobatics that I, I just can't do some of these things if I go out and get in a Decathlon.

Why is that? What's different?

So the first thing is the power-to-weight ratio, right? So my airplane weighs about 1,250 pounds, has about 340 horsepower to it.

So it's a, it has a Lycoming, uh, an IO 580 engine, but it's also, uh, been tuned, ported, polished, increased the compression ratio.

And Lycoming has a, a Thunderbolt division inside of their factory.

There's about five people inside the factory in one room that build these special engines for us, and, um, they do a great job.

So essentially, many of the world-level aerobatic airplanes now and, like, RVs and things of that nature, they, most of them have these Thunderbolt engines in them.

So you're trying to extract the most amount of horsepower that you can get out of the engine in a safe manner and reliable manner because the airplane also has to cross the Rocky Mountains going to California and things like that, yet be able to turn incredibly, uh, high RPM on a ra- on an airshow day with high temperatures and all of the things.

And then when you look at the advent of the modern aerobatic airplane, carbon fiber technology has gone leaps and bounds, right? So it, it makes the airplane very stiff, uh, very rugged, reliable, allows incredibly high roll rates from big ailerons without twisting the airframe and twisting the wing and things like that.

So, um, that's the biggest thing.

If you look at a Decathlon or a Pitts or some of these other airplanes, when then you compare it to a, a modern aerobatic airplane, they're just so strong.

But there's more than just strength.

It's not just, "Hey, how many Gs can the airplane pull?" It's, how fast can I roll at what speed, and, and the roll inertia, like how fast does the airplane get to its full roll rate, and how fast does it get out of its full roll rate? 'Cause that's the impact to the people.

Like, it goes from being perfectly still to rolling 400 degrees a second in the blink of an eye, and in that same blink of an eye, it stops at the same rate with which it started.

And, uh, they've done a great job of taking the center of mass and moving it to the center so there's no inertia in the wing, and the controls are just so incredibly powerful that you're able to do that.

And, and so that's the big thing.

And now today, when you look at the propeller combination, so nobody runs a metal propeller.

You even either have an MT prop, which is a, essentially a wooden core propeller, or you have a Hartzell propeller like I have, which is composite.

They're very lightweight.

They don't transmit any vibration, uh, or gyroscopic forces to the crankshaft, or they reduce them in such a way that it's, it's safe for the engine, which it didn't, it wasn't 25 years ago, right? We had crankshaft failures and propellers coming off the front of airplanes, uh, with alarming regularity back 25 years ago, which we don't have anymore.

That's a thing of the past.

So you put together the propeller, the engine, and the airframe, and then you put a pilot in there that is incredibly well-trained and practiced and, um, confident in their skills, and that's what makes sort of a top-level either airshow or competition pilot.