Jetwhine's Scott Spangler managed to dig up another new entry in the Diesel aircraft engine market at Airventure. The Gemini 100 Diesel aircraft engine sports a very interesting implementation, with an opposed piston design. Which for you non-gearhead's means that two pistons share the same cylinder. Gemini has already gotten interest from Tecnam who'd like to put the engine in their P92 Eaglet.

There was quite a bit of fuss earlier this summer over the insolvency (bankruptcy) of TAE (Thielert)...the manufacturer of the diesel engines for Diamond Aircraft's DA-42 Twin Star. The economy offered by the Twin Star's great design and its super-efficient engines revolutionized twin piston training and stood to influence the entire piston aircraft market.

Diamond, being a proactive company announced that it would deal with the problems by "simply" producing their own diesel engines, something they'd been working on for a while. I hadn't heard anything in a while, so I snooped around and was turned on to the following by an Aviation.ca article.

For those of you that may have missed the Martin Jetpack demo at Airventure.

Lycoming announced this week at Airventure that they are pursuing an engine designed for the LSA market. The IO-233-LSA is a derivative of the IO-235 engine already in production and will be configured to use both AvGas and auto fuel without ethanol. Initial performance numbers weigh in at around 100hp, 200 pounds, 2400 hour TBO, and 5.25 gph at 75% power.

Check out our LSA Engine Comparison Table for a pretty comprehensive list of the competitors.

There hasn't been much buzz about Burt Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, since they won the $10M Ansari X-Prize by successfully flying the worlds first civilian spacecraft in 2004. Monday, we found out what they've been up to as Sir Richard Branson and Burt Rutan rolled out WhiteKnightTwo (WK2)...the launch/mother ship for their commercial spacecraft SpaceShipTwo (still under development.) Check out Wired's article for pictures or read the press release at Virgin Galactic's website.

Mac McClellan with Flying Magazine has written a great article chronicling what he see as an Airplane price bubble in used aircraft in the last 30 years.

JetWhine, via one of their contributors Scott Spangler, points out a very cool airplane that I must have missed in my pursuit of flying on the cheap. Their article points to a company called Valley Engineering that produces a line of aircraft called the "Backyard Flyer". Powered by VW engines these guys throw out some pretty impressive performance numbers... all this for about $30,000. Where do I sign?

Video Preview after the break...

Gippsland Aeronautics has announced that they're buying the Australian "type-certificate" for the GAF Nomad, most famous for its role in the television series The Flying Doctors. Gippsland is probably most well known for their GA-8 Airvan flown in a number of countries and by the Civil Air Patrol in the U.S.