Food for Thought

A friend made me realize that I had made a decision in secret that I should have been more vocal about. After all, I had expressed my concerns about it here before.
The topic at hand is the engine choice for the RV-12. I had said before that I was considering an alternative to the Rotax 912S and that I was looking into the Viking engine.
I have now decided to not deviate from the plans and go the ELSA route which means that I will be buying my engine from Van's and install the 912S.

The Reasons
When the Viking came out I was hoping that it would sell and install in much larger numbers and quicker than it actually did. The delay was partially caused by last minute production line changes but the result is now that I don't see a large enough number of hours flown on engines not owned by the company that I would trust my own installation flying across a wide open desert. I am experimental - not tired of life, to put it more bluntly.
I don't see this lack of proven hours significantly change until mid 2012 when I want to be ready to hang my engine.
The current lead time for a Viking is around 6 months and that would make it impossible to get my bird in the air this year which is my expressed goal. I am grounded for way too long and I want to finish this build soon.
Even if the availability, and track record would be to my liking, I had still to consider that deviating the plans on my first build to the extent of mounting a different engine would be a very big task to handle on my own. I don't have access to anybody locally who could help me or just give me advise after looking something over. I think just following the plans on the engine install as provided by Van's might be challenging already. I don't even know at this point how much effort there would be involved to get the Viking supported by the SkyView that I bought through Van's and which settings are all locked out and preset tp support the 912S. If this couldn't get fixed, I would have to buy another SV panel for around $3k alone. And the overall savings by going with the Viking are just around $10k given the fact that I bought the kit parts that I don't need for the Viking but that are hard to return now that I have them (cowl, installed fuel pump and gascolator, etc.).

This doesn't mean that I gave up on the Viking or would think that it's not a terrific engine. To the contrary! It is just not my choice at this time for the project at hand.
Once I have flown 1500 hours on the Rotax, I will reevaluate the situation then and it is very well possible that I feel confident to make an engine change and that might very well be the Viking that will have a much longer track record at that time.