I flew R.C. (Radio Control) planes. It was a hobby that I got into when I had no money to get into it. Thankfully, my friend was friends with a guy who taught him everything he knows about building planes from balsa. I learned about skinning balsa wood with Monokote. I learned all about how Zip Kicker accelerated the curing of various super glues. I learned about Tower Hobbies and Circus Circus's radios with new frequencies (all now outlawed by the FCC.) I learned about heat guns and fuel mixtures and accident repair. Essentially it was the first hobby I ever got into and this was the first engine that helped me enjoy it.
My teacher, took on two snot-nosed kids and taught us to fly. My friend had a control line gas powered airplane to start and I was a step behind. He helped me build my first plane out of toothpick balsa wood and tissue paper. A "Comet" kit called the "Phantom Fury". It was a rubber band powered plane and I had fun with it for a short time but wanted to move on. So, I started on my next plane kit, a control line trainer kit I can't remember the name of. I do remember that rather than painting the plane, I wanted it to show clear wood. (Something I still love, with a guitar that is much the same.) My teacher knew that I had little $$$ so he gave me this .049 engine from Testors.
Testors made a few engines and were in the model airplane and car business for a little bit of time in the 70's. They made fuel and small engines for their small plane and cars. (I think they were mostly plastic pre-built items.) I vaguely remember this engine as the first one on my control line trainer plane that I named the "Snow Bird". My teacher had rebuilt the "needle valve" on it to allow the throttle mix of fuel into the engine. It also had a spring (since broken) that allowed you to flip the motor into life. (You hooked a battery up to the "glow plug" on the top and that helped to ignite the fuel while the needle valve added air to help the fuel burn better.) It was easy to start, ran about 4 minutes on a tank of gas and was a blast to fly in a circle.
Testors engines were a short lived thing, and I can't find anything on their history. I believe they were sold to COX but I'm not sure. The Testors engine was still on the Snow Bird when it was destroyed when it did a face plant into a field so we mounted this engine on a piece of firewall wood. I think I ran it 10 years later with some old fuel I had just to see if it ran and it did, but I was done with the RC hobby. I still have a "Gentle Lady" glider kit, not built. Someday.... I still have the COX which will appear on a future blog.
ARF! -Ric
Boomer The Dog
People will often say that the gasoline engine is so inefficient where cars are concerned, but here we have tiny little gas engines that work just like the big ones, and can propel a model plane for 4 minutes on a thimble full of gas.
That's a decent amount of power in a small space that does what you want it to on a student's budget, compared to the RC of today, drones.
Ricochet replied to comment from Boomer The Dog
These were really small hobby engines but some of the bigger engines really had some power. Mr. Harper had a "Wankel" engine that was some serious pull, but he never used it. His time was spent helping us to fly. He did make a "toilet seat" plane out of a Styrofoam "Kite". How they ever meant it to fly as a kite I'll never know. It was literally a foam "toilet seat" with a fin. As a plane, it was a handful to fly, but I never saw it fly.
There is a little more pain to flying with fuel because of the nitro content, the oil content and the cost for a small container of it. Plus the fuss of getting it to run right and the noise involved..
I think when batteries got so cheap and long life, it made the need for a gas engine hobbyist just that much less important.
ARF! -Ric