Phoenix Song.

[Graham C. Williams]

Dear all.
Just a quick pick for the moment. I'll do a writeup tomorrow and post it in the next few days.

Graham.

[Tom]

1) Holy hell to the setup : oP
2) I see signs of fire!

Tom

[Mike Everman]

Ah, 'tis a beautiful thing. For those of you who don't know it, that's a BCVP! It looks like it's going to eat something on a distant planet. Truly superior fabrication, boys.

[Viv]

Nice work boys is that Penamunda by the sea?

Viv

[Mike Everman]

Wouldn't you Brits say Penamunda-on-sea?

[Viv]

Wouldn't you Brits say Penamunda-on-sea?

No the sea is a ways away so its by the sea, you have to walk over a rise and a gate to see the salt flats that are behind the test area.

And you would not want to try and walk on them to the sea as they are a bit marshy to say the least.

Nice test site though with a river to fish in as well.

Viv

[Bruno Ogorelec]

What the picture needs is an image of the inventor. standing over to the side somewhere, apprehension on his face, thinking, "My God, what did I do?" The thing looks like something that might eat little children. I'm looking forward to the write-up with bated breath, palms sweaty....

[Viv]

This is a very long way away from your original idea Bruno, the Phoenix is a Perfidious Albion motor, the design and conception is down to Graham and an incredible amount of time and effort on his part in the design and analysis for it.

Over the years we have moved a long way from your original paper so any body looking at the Phoenix should not compare the two to closely as this will just cause confusion.

Some of the operating principles are still there but the rest have been discovered and perfected since, it will be interesting to see what the final development of the idea leads too.

Its worth noting that parts of this engine were made on a CNC mill that Nick built and developed from scratch as a winter project, as normal Nick has done a sterling job on building the engine.

Viv

[Bruno Ogorelec]

we have moved a long way from your original paper so any body looking at the Phoenix should not compare the two to closely as this will just cause confusion.

Well, let's get the confusion out of the way. How about a potted description of the engine, so that we are clear in our minds what's a BCVP and what a Phoenix. Omit the saucy details you want to keep to yourself; just say something that will distinguish one beast from the other.

Come on, guys, it is not as if new engines are coming up every day. It si not as if twin-combustor engines are coming up at all! You owe it to the community to tell us at least the vital statistics, you know, like Hugh Hefner would do for his beauties.

[Viv]

we have moved a long way from your original paper so any body looking at the Phoenix should not compare the two to closely as this will just cause confusion.

Well, let's get the confusion out of the way. How about a potted description of the engine, so that we are clear in our minds what's a BCVP and what a Phoenix. Omit the saucy details you want to keep to yourself; just say something that will distinguish one beast from the other.

Come on, guys, it is not as if new engines are coming up every day. It si not as if twin-combustor engines are coming up at all! You owe it to the community to tell us at least the vital statistics, you know, like Hugh Hefner would do for his beauties.

After four years of hard work, untold thousands of man hours and thousands of pounds in tools, welders, and steel!

You can all wait for a while untill the boys are good and ready:-)

Viv

[Mike Everman]

I can't wait for Graham's write-up. It surely must have run, and I expect well!
Viv needs to give credit for the idea to Bruno, no matter how many details needed to be worked out, or essentials discovered along the way. The effort on Graham's part, I can attest, has been a staggering amount, and you guys were partners after all. Bruno I think needs to give credit to E-P maybe, for the lower level kernel of the idea? <grn>

Viv, I don't think Bruno wants anything from you guys but a "Laurel and Hardy Handshake". Saying the engine is completely different because of the details, well, I don't think that's as fair as it could be(?)

[Viv]

I can't wait for Graham's write-up. It surely must have run, and I expect well!
Viv needs to give credit for the idea to Bruno, no matter how many details needed to be worked out, or essentials discovered along the way. The effort on Graham's part, I can attest, has been a staggering amount, and you guys were partners after all. Bruno I think needs to give credit to E-P maybe, for the lower level kernel of the idea? <grn>

Viv, I don't think Bruno wants anything from you guys but a "Laurel and Hardy Handshake". Saying the engine is completely different because of the details, well, I don't think that's as fair as it could be(?)

I have given credit to Bruno both now and in the past! all I am saying is that this is the Phoenix engine and it is Grahams concept and design based on the work of the Albion team members after Bruno ceased to be directly involved.

Reading the BCVP paper will not tell you how this engine works and that is the point that I am making, this is a long way from that paper the same as a Ford V8 is a long way from Ottos single cylinder engine.

Undeniably similar but very differant beasts.

Plenty of people have tried to build and perfect the BCVP, the only people to have got more than a bang out of it was the Albion team, since then it has been moved on.

All the hard work and money has been spent in the UK I would like that acknoledged, I am not trying to take anything away from anybody but I do want credit for the Phoenix to go to Graham for designing it and Nick for building it.

And the EP never worked it was just a doodle the guy did when he had too much to drink one night:-)

Viv
Ps was it Otto?

[Mike Everman]

Cool. 'Nuf said. God but the sketches I do when I've had mind altering substances sure make for a lot of work to make them real!

[Bruno Ogorelec]

We'll see what the description says. The posterity will judge.

These things are never clear-cut, you know. There's always some precedent somewhere. Like the double-overhead camshaft head for piston engines -- first done by Peugeot in France but not widely copied until Miller did it in the US. The Miller engine was then copied in France by Bugatti, and the Bugatti made it famous and was copied by everyone else.

Everyone builds on things that everyone else did before. Later on, historians pretend to see clear lines and steps of development and debts of one man to another.

Here’s how the BCVP idea was generated.

Many years ago (sometime in the mid-1960s) I got interested in the pulsejet, an engine that sounded so fantastically simple I could hardly believe it really worked. Its only problems were the vulnerable valves and the lack of pre-compression.

I spent months, possibly years, devising ways to combat the two problems. One of the approaches was going the two-stroke way and employing a free piston between two combustors. It would do the aspiration thing without valves and also offer compression.

In my twenties, I solved the problem of valves better by devising a pneumatic-powered valve. It could be heavy (and thus resistant to heat and slamming) because it was powered by a small steam engine – which ran on propane rather than water vapor. The device did not just power the valve but also metered the fuel flow, letting just the determined amount of gas into the combustion chamber, like fuel injection.

I could see that the double-acting vapor engine would be much more effective, which gave me the idea of a twin-combustor pulsejet. The power valve/fuel meter delivered to one engine on the downstroke and to the other on upstroke. The two pulse combustors were coaxial to avoid the rocking couple. One was cylindrical and the other annular, one wrapped around the other.

When I find time, I’ll make a drawing (or scan an old one if I can find it) and post it. I am absolutely certain the thing would work. It is a non-acoustical pulsejet, positively driven and timed by the propane vapor engine.

That left the problem of compression. One day, I learned about the Comprex compressor by Brown Boveri. It is the device that first saw the principle of blast compression employed in practice. It was quite a revelation to me. I thought that perhaps such compression of gas by other gas might be employed in a pulsejet, keeping it as simple as it has ever been. At about the same time I learned that a pulsejet can be valveless.

Next, I learned about the Esnault-Pelterie engine that did a pressure exchange similar to the Comprex without the complexity of rotary vanes and positive drives. This was reinforced when I read about the pulsejet engine Foa did at the Rensselaer Polytechnic, which also used reflected waves for compression.

And then it all clicked together – two combustors working out of phase in the same tube using each other’s pressure pulses for compression and ignition, but avoiding valves and relying on the choking of the narrowing nozzle instead.

So, I owe my debt to Schmidt, to the people who invented double-acting vapor engines, to Brown Boveri, Esnault-Pelterie and Foa. They all contributed to the mix that produced the BCVP concept.

The Albion/Phoenix group owes a debt to me for coming up with the idea of a blast compression engine. At the time, we were not aware that Bodine did almost the exact same thing back in 1956 and that Dunbar also did some iterations of Esnault-Pelterie’s layouts a few years earlier. How much of the original concept remains hidden within the Phoenix remains to be seen.

I do know that at the time he joined our group, Graham Williams was working on a twin combustor engine of his own. I saw a number of his concept drawings and even understood some of them. He possesses a powerful mind and knows a great deal.

As soon as he joined the BCVP group, he started seeing problems with my concept. I never managed really to understand what he was saying – he was either a bad teacher or I a bad pupil or a bit of both – but the fact is that the group started doubting my ideas and I theirs. Or rather, I would probably have doubted their ideas had I only understood them.

After a while, helped by the fact that we did not manage to agree on intellectual property rights, we drifted apart and the planned partnership never took official form.

I have no idea what direction the development has taken since. I’ve been told that the difference is major. Maybe that is indeed so. The Phoenix details will come up sooner or later and we will all be able to judge, I guess.

I’ve also been told that the BCVP will never work. Maybe they are right. Maybe they are wrong. I think they are wrong, but cannot really tell at this point. I don’t understand their arguments.

They also claim that the Esnault-Pelterie engine does not work, meaning that the Dunbar and Bodine engines do not work, either. All four depend on the same working principle. It’s a brave position to take and the final judgment will certainly be interesting.

The only thing to do now is wait and see, and reserve our judgment until enough is revealed.

[Viv]

Nice thanks for that Bruno, you know the biggest problem is the billion or so words that were written on the BCVP in the old forum are not online for every one to look over and learn the history.

I miss all the stuff that was there! we really ought to make an effort to get it off Kenneth and edit up for republishing, massive project but well worth the effort i think.

Viv