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Gaspar Espiell, founder of Xicoy Electronica SL started building RC turbines in 1994 by the hand of Mr. Jesus Artés. In 1995 they had the first engine running, and in the summer of 1996 flights began. They quickly realized that turbine engines needed an electronic control to operate safely and reliably, and in the summer of 1998 the first FADEC controller went into production, beginning the supply of thousands of electronic controllers to 11 manufacturers of different turbines to this day. Over the years the electronics of RC turbine motors have been improving adding more features and reliability. In 2013 Gaspar developed brushless pump control which dramatically improved pump life, reliability and accuracy. This feature put Xicoy controllers ahead of the competition, plus recent developments such as auto restart are setting the path for competitors to follow.

Parallel to the design of electronics, during the last 25 years Gaspar has continued his work in the development of motors. It has more than 12 successful unique engine designs that have been manufactured in a total of more than 13,000 units through the JetsMunt, JetCentral and Xicoy companies.

The first Xicoy engine, the X45, started as a personal project of Gaspar in a relaxed way in the Christmas holidays of 2016. Then the drawings and calculations were done. The main parts, which are the turbine wheel and the stator were drawn at that time and sent to a prototyping company to manufacture the first samples.

At the beginning of 2017, Xicoy acquired and moved to a new premises to have more space and the possibility to have CNC machines at home. All the setup of the new premises and the move absorbed most of the R&D time, so the X45 project remained dormant. Fall 2017 and the first half of 2018 were devoted to finishing development on the JetsMunt M70, M166, and M210 engines at Xicoy premises, so no work was done on the X45 until summer 2018.

The X45 first ran in August 2018. During these early tests, the engine showed great potential, surpassing the initial design target of 40N. Plans were quickly made to transform the personal project into a mass-produced product.

In the following months work continued and a substantial investment was made to manufacture the molds for the mass production of turbine wheel and stator castings.

During this time a serendipitous opportunity arose where a colleague of many years was looking for a new challenge and was able to join Gaspar to share the workload and assist in the manufacture of these engines and others that followed. The colleague is Mike Murphy, formally of Wren Turbines. Mike was at Xicoy until mid-2021, when he returned to the UK to take charge of the manufacture, distribution and maintenance of Xicoy engines in the UK.

In 2019, Gaspar sold his shares in Jetsmunt to concentrate his efforts in Xicoy projects. In May 2019 the X45 went on sale, being a great success, selling more than 1.000 engines in less than 2 years. In next years, other models followed... and there are still more to come!

We ran our first homebuilt turbine in 1995, and first flight was in 1996, more than 25 years ago. We know the RC turbine industry since its beginning in the 90s, and since then we have been actively present suppliying our innovative products to hundreds of customers, having earned a well-deserved respect for our seriousness and service. We combine knowledge in different aspects that allow us to be self sufficient, not depending on other's technology. All our products are all developped in house, this allow to design all components in an engine to work together in total harmony.

Currently  Xicoy has 5 service centers ready to service the X45 engines located in Spain, USA, UK, Switzerland and Australia.

Xicoy Electronica SL
Pl. Pere Llauger Prim, nau 18,
08360 Canet de Mar, Barcelona
SPAIN
Tel +34 937 942 774
email: sales@xicoy.com