danny_galaga

Depends what type. On mine, and many others, it's liquid heated. And only heating the inlet flange, not the air. It's permanently on. Since online the inlet flange is heated, it has virtually no effect on performance, but obviously it would probably take too long to work if you could turn it on and off

What I mean is, compared to my rotary valve 049 on the other plane, this one, with its ostensibly safer spring start has caused me more injuries 😄 049 fuel hose is way smaller diameter than chainsaw hose. As you can see, it's running now 🙂

Well, I took the lil model to the club today. It wasn't playing the game. The guys recommended 3 to 3 1/2 turns on the needle valve. I ended up flattening my battery and getting way more raps on the knuckles than I do without a spring start 😄 Went home and pulled the attached fuel tank apart because we all suspected something was not quite right. Crimped fuel pick up or missing reed valve etc. Sure enough the fuel pick up end was kinda squashed. I fixed it up and started it up at home. Running at 1 1/2 turns! A couple more tanks will see it settle in. VID_20260208_163601.mp4

One cell is just a smidge over 2V. 2.2V will actually do in the plug faster than leaving my 1.2V connected.

While it's been a while, it's not my first rodeo ☺️ Once started, the glow plug still glows, so I'm not sure how much life I'm saving. But it's prudent to be fairly quick to not flatten the battery. This was super important as a kid when I only had those huge 1.5v alkaline batteries.

So, continuing with scratch building stuff I could just buy, heres the other end of that clip. Made from some pen barrels, K & S tubing and a small bullet head nail. I don't want lots of paraphernalia or a giant flight box, so this keeps things about as simple as can be. The glow driver is USB charged and fits almost everything else. Now I can use it on Cox ☺️

Well spotted! I was googling for ohlssen with the ignition set up to emphasise it's 'olden dayness ' 😄 No idea why that came up instead 🤔

At the risk of sounding pedantic, because yes the odds are big, they are not 100 billion to one big. If there is an inherent design fault in the switch for instance, and they are from the same batch, chances are much higher. That is, if they have the same built in issue, there's a good chance they will wear out at roughly the same time. And I'm not suggesting they did this, but if one switch has been a bit iffy for a little while, and someone just holds it on takeoff just to be sure, you've allowed the other, very slightly better switch to 'catch up'. Again I don't have any experience with this sort of thing, but the odds of two switches failing at the same time are not quite as steep as you might first imagine.

Matthew followed me in his aeronca and took this in passing, my first air to air picture of my Bushcat 😊

My last flight was the Saturday just passed. Out of Boonah. Still just pootling around since it's still not fully certified yet. Here's my Bushcat, doors off near lake Moogerah 🙂

https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/sodium-ion-batteries-vehicles-ev-fast-charge/

Just ribbing ya, Nev 😊

Ohlsson was still the shizz when Nev was a teenager 😆

I couldn't readily get hold of a glow clip for my new radial mount 049, so I hearkened back to the olden days and made my own from stuff that was kicking around ☺️

The ultimate 'getthereitis' 😟

I wanna rob a bank with you. Since you thinks it's the same, I'll take 80% and you can have 20% 😀 😇

Most cars are doing what, 110kmh if travelling long distances. You would agree that's their constant load? That's maybe 20% power. Big difference to an aircrafts constant load. I had a girlfriend who used to commute between kunnanarra and Darwin. She was nuts. She drove her Hyundai excel at 160-170 all that distance. Now that load has got be be closer to an aircrafts constant load. When she'd get home, you could smell the hot oil and the engine block paint burning. I'm extremely confident she would have blown it up after not too many more trips but she ended up hitting a cow. How she survived that I don't know.

I will relieve you of the os40 for the right price 😊

I have a soft spot for OS ☺️ Funny thing with this club model is that the idea is everyone has a radial mounted 049 kicking around. Except me! I ended up buying a new one from Cox in Canada. I believe they are essentially building new ones from unused parts. Once that runs out it'll definitely be over.

It's not really an old chestnut if it's true though, is it? I used to think car engines should be a great alternative. Even when I learnt to fly and learnt about the basic differences between the two types I didn't latch on to the engineering side of things. It's only once I started building my own plane and seeing if there were other options out there did I learn more, quite a bit from this very forum. Quite a bit from facthunter, but also others In my mind the big hurdle that will never be hurdled is the fact a car engine is designed to run at relatively low power settings most of the time, with fairly short bursts at high power. An aircraft engine is more like 70-80% most of the time, and small aircraft 100% on climb. You could be climbing for five minutes. That's the equivalent of a car going onto an impossibly long salt flat and just flooring it and driving at its top speed for five minutes. There's a reason top fuel dragsters are rebuilt after every run. That reason alone makes the car engine stand on the back foot from the get go. No manufacturer is going to spend the money engineering their car engines to suit those scenarios 'just in case'. But there are other reasons too. I think the only thing that might be comparable that could be converted might be marine engines. But they're not exactly cheap, and lets face it, the big appeal of car engines is price. Having said all that, I would love to build a Pietenpol Air Camper. I would use a Datsun 120Y engine 😊

As promised, the beginner class 1/2a combat model made from core flute. The only part that is glued is the lead out guide. Engine mount is 3D printed and attached with three screws. I couldn't easily find a glow clip to suit Cox. On Lucky Lil 7 I just used alligator clips because that version is beam mounted so was easy to just clip onto an engine mount bolt. So I decided to channel the olden days and made one from a clothes peg 😊. Didn't have any handy sized wire kicking around so will finish it off during the week.

This is actually the last model I built, about three years ago. I didn't go hard core with proper FAI rubber, just the rubber in the kit so it didn't fly far or long. Just as well, I was just using a football field. I would have lost it 😄 I have much better photos somewhere, but here's a screenshot shot from FB 🙂

049 is the classic beginners engine. But for all the reasons you imagine, they really aren't great for beginners. The reason they were so popular is price. Personally, I think a .10 is a useful minimum size for CL. My first CL model as a kid was a .15. which I still have. You aren't wrong though, since this plane (which I built over 20 years ago) isn't aerobatic it's not exactly exciting 😄. I didn't even have any other propellers to tune it. I have some now. If you think this plane is simple, wait until you see my current project 😄 We are doing a club 1/2a combat class. Made from one 3d printed mount, that I've reverse engineered (ie, stole the design) and one piece of core flute with a 3mm carbon fibre rod inserted. Took me about 1 hour to draw up and cut out 😀. Again 049. I believe the design isn't particularly aerobatic, but I've identified a few things I can improve. It has to be really simple, to get hands on handles. I just have to adjust the mount now because I didn't allow for shrinkage. Probably go about 2% larger. I'll post a pic when it's all done 🙂

Yes, you've enjoyed telling me that a couple of times now. It's a 1/2a speed model. 049. KISS baby, KISS.