Nigel R

Petrols in my neck of the woods are running large props at low revs and some fancy extra silencers. Not exactly "out of the box". IME, for the same kind of power region, neither a glow 10cc two stroke (on and off a tuned pipe), nor a 15cc glow four stroke, were a problem to get past the magic 82dB, but both were very close to or on the limit.

Some thoughts / my tuppence. It strikes me that one of the problem scale models have is that scale models don't operate on scale grass. We can't fix the grass problem, so we might want to angle the gear forward "a bit" to counter that. I'd guess that can be accommodated by different pintle angles and whatnot on a scale model, all whilst keeping the scale wheel well position. The CG shouldn't need to be much different to the full size. Warbirds were not designed to be inherently unstable (unlike a fly by wire jet).

But that doesn't mention or address stability. It does mention "high speed stall", as in, a heavy model stalls at a higher speed, but that's a different subject to stability. The stall angle is not affected by CG position. As GG says, happy to be educated.

Stability has (possibly) a few meanings. Aerodynamically (we need an aerodynamicist here) I don't believe the characteristics of the airfoil, in terms of CofP movement etc etc, will vary by scale or reynolds. I could be wrong. However - taper, wing loading, tailplane size, neither factor in the airfoil parameters. At an airframe level, a tapered wing will exhibit more tip stall at lower scale due to behaviour at lower reynolds. I guess that could be 'stability'. How the tip stall problem is countered is a different question I guess.

Perry pumps IMO: - good but quite pricey by comparison to the extra tank - quite small and easy to retrofit, especially in a tight install where a tank won't fit - not every carburetor will be 100% happy with a pump, although most twin needle can be made to work acceptably well * * When I converted a pump engine (with a flaky pump) to regular operation, the main difference in parts was that the carb barrel was different, which had the effect of altering the mid-range running characteristics. Without the different barrel, the midrange would have been lean without the pump.

Can't recall the name of it now, but they're a way you can set up a small auxiliary tank in the correct place. Chicken hopper?

Super nylon are fairly decent props. I prefer them to apc. I wouldn't go out and get a new apc prop yet, use what you have.

Hello all I've inadvertently ended up with some Robart units (the 1/8" OD tubing, air up/spring down) and some 4mm OD tubing control clobber. The 4mm stuff looks like the black horse clobber (but is some old Eurokit stuff). I guess I simply need some way to convert between the two tubing sizes - does such a widget exist? Clearly the easy option is to buy the Robart control gear bundle, but this seems an expensive answer...

Covering. Have to force myself to start. Whatever method I'm using. I'm fine with woodwork and kit install.

ED, Eneloops are gold standard, as RX batteries are a single point of failure, I spend out on the best here. Of course, options exist to have multiple packs with failover type setups, but the best option is almost always a simple setup with reliable parts. Plus, Eneloops seem to have good shelf life. Anywhere stocking ripmax clobber will carry eneloop packs: http://www.ripmax.com/Item.aspx?ItemID=O-4EN2000AASF&Category=090-010 I expect someone will be along to say how good LiFe or LiPo packs are soon... 😈

Also worth adding; at idle - with the engine running at a vacuum in the intake, there is comparatively little air/fuel charge to be compressed, with a low amount of compression comes a low amount of heating of the intake charge at full throttle - the engine is running wide open, a much larger air/fuel charge enters the motor, thus more compression occurs, and with more compression comes a larger increase of charge temperature the hotter mixture contributes to the advance of ignition "Diesel engines or compression ignition" Technically, glow engines are compression ignition - aided and abetted by the catalyst in the glow plug of course.

I'd only somewhat agree Martin - I've several engines that I've tweaked and tweaked to get "perfect" transition and they've wound up in a slightly different needle setting to the "perfect" idle. It's a balance, as ever. I'd add that carbs with an old or busted O ring are never going to be right, so there's that, too.

Just checked the stats on this, its listed as 61" and 9lbs finished weight. I'd go for a 120 glow four stroke. Plenty on Ebay as a second hand.

As noted above, glow motors often lose RPM at low speed without the driver. If the idle is reliable without it... well, who cares? Worry about nailing the full throttle tuning, and getting idle + transition reliability, everything else is not that important. Just thinking aloud about factors affecting the ignition timing on our glow motors, there are a lot - heat of engine, heat of plug element, element wear, element composition, fuel/air mixture, how well the carb atomises the fuel... adding or removing a glow driver to the mix changes that balance by adding heat to the glow element + advancing the ignition point. Worth noting that automotive diesel engines - which also rely on compression ignition - use direct injection at terrific pressure and can time the injection squirts to affect ignition timing. We have none of that control!

What vapex cells are they? They do "standard" and low discharge types (marked as "instant" i think). Your results look about expected for standard type. Although the variance is quite large. Low discharge are better for our purposes, in my opinion. Those should show 80pc of the rate capacity when cycling at 2C.

Used to? Still do on some of my needles...

Model Technics Laser 5 - is 5% nitro 15% synthetic

Another on fleabay, new SC silencer that will fit. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203005035517

Enya are good motors, but less common, and I think spares may be an issue. Os and saito are far more common. You pays your money etc.

I concur about brand choice, for second hand. End of season, run the engine dry off possible. That's the only after run precautions I ever take. Jons advice is all spot on.

Or use less throttle stick?

I'm just saying what I see Simon; I agree entirely with what you say. Everyone wanted ARTF, so we had ARTF, now ARTF is too expensive for a lot of people and the volume goes down. ARTF were very cheap, artificially I suspect (because various global/political factors which have now changed), and now they are not cheap, and shifting in lower volumes. I agree, a similar problem, but market forces are what they are. Balsa and glow? Perhaps, liteply and petrol. Times change. None of us can predict the future. It will not be so bleak as all that. Just... different. Maybe in 10 years, turbines will cost 1/2 what they do now... 10 years ago, a foamie jet with a tiny turbine was still sci-fi.

Depends. How big is your model? How many servos? What kind of servos? What is the engine - single cylinder 2 stroke? Seven cylinder radial?

I can't see there being much money in small engines. Without money there will be no commercial offerings. There is money where there is mass market, and some where there is expensive fancy sunday bests. The expensive fancy sunday bests are no longer mid-to-large size glow, instead that seems to be big petrols, going up to massive motorbike sized petrol radials for 1/3 scale warbirds, then there are turbines, etc. The mass market in small engines? Might be something with RC cars I guess. Everyone wanted electric. Now we have electric. Electric power makes props turn round but is quite dull. Electric does not have the mechanical beauty of a finely engineered IC. That's ok if you don't really care about the motor as a toy in and of itself; if you simply want to plug in a battery and fly. Not everyone wants a swiss watch, but, anyone who wants to mess about with small engines is the minority and the minority does not get a diverse selection of manufacturers vying for our cash. I also don't see very many on here rushing out buying new small or mid size glow motors (with the exception of some Laser aficionados, although that has now ended, not sure what you guys are going to splash out on now. OS? Saito? Move up to a big Valach? 20cc and up is still dominated by petrol, so that's an indication of what people want, in that size. The 2 strokes are easy enough to operate and probably cost a lot less than electric, following recent price rises on electric clobber. Seems to be a future there.

Not worth messing with it, I would agree with the above posters suggesting getting rid and replacing