A hundred years ago the Wright
brothers performed the first flight ever on an airplane equipped with a
piston engine. Old but gold, piston engines have certain advantages over
small-sized turbine engines (provided the take-off power does not exceed
400 hp) from the economic, technical and ecological viewpoints. However,
the number of factories producing piston engines around the world is limited.
Russia has only one such factory, the Voronezh mechanical plant, a manufacturer
of the M-14P engine for sport aircraft. Mass production of piston engines
for extremely light aircrafts (like motor gliders, paraplanes) in Russia
is absent. In a likelihood, only two or three years from now we might expect
new models of piston engines to appear on the market. Admittedly, the market
demand in piston engines is estimated at 3 to 5 thousands a year.