They live!

I'll need to take some pictures to make this thread worthwhile(ETA: Done!)...but being prone to "analysis paralysis" figured I need to get started even if I don't have everything ready.

I've been wanting to get back into 1/2-A control line flying for a while. It has been a struggle to overcome my inertia, but I have hooked up with a few local CL guys (formum member jhayefor one) and they have been stoking the fires. One even gave me an ARF Flight Streak, which I maiden'd last Saturday.

I have a big box of engines from my teenage years in the 1970's. All gummed up with castor varnish and pretty nasty as a whole. But after flying the Flight Streak, I was motivated and pulled out a few examples and set to work. I needed to be home to mind my injured dog (doing well, jhaye) anyway.

First up was a little PeeWee .020 I got off feebay.

It had a loose piston/rod joint, so had been waiting for my order from Cox International with a reset tool to arrive. A few taps with a hammer and it was ready to go. 2-1/2 turns on the needle turned out to be way too rich, and I was getting pretty tired of flipping the prop when I worked out that 1-1/2T was about where it wanted to start.

Well the PeeWee was fun. Lets see if I can get the TeeDee .051 running. This still had the firewall from a Q-Tee that it powered in the early '80s attached to the tank mount. Had to twist off one of the screws that was epoxy-welded into a tee-nut.


An hour or so of cleaning and I had that one running, even with the cracked carb mount (have a couple on order). MUCH easier to start than the #$%^ PeeWee.

OK, Lets try a reedy! My old Black Widow was in pieces, as I needed the tank screws for another project (see below). This allowed a lot of dirt and junk to settle inside the tank, so it took a lot of cleaning. Had to do some measuring of the air inlet to make sure I had the right backplate. (Yes metal, NO not for sale!) I had ordered a screw set a while back, so we were ready to go. The crank was stuck pretty good. Took a while with a heat gun to make it removable. Stud broke when I was pressing the driver plate back on. Took a small chip out of the very end of the crank when it broke...won't hurt anything, but annoying.



The 'Widow fired up eventually when I found the sweet spot for the needle. I don't own a tach, but it sounded pretty good. This is a real 'Widow with a #1 SPI cylinder and the large bore intake, so it goes pretty good. I recall was a big step up from the bee it replaced, even though that bee had a P-40 cylinder. On a lil'Satan, that thing was hard to stay ahead of! The case and prop driver show some wear from electric starter use (I was young and dumb!) but the end play is not extreme, and the crank pin is still well clear of the tank/reed seat.

Last night (Wed) I got the bug again, and pulled out my "Golden Bee" RC franken-engine. This was what I ran on a Sterling Puddle Jumper. This was a Golden-bee tank purchased as a new part, with a case and crank from some dead plastic model (maybe the Shrike aircar?? Bushmaster? P-51?) And the cylinder throttle/sleeve off a cox car..van maybe? The crank was stuck even more firmly in this one, but the heat gun came through again.




It was 10 pm by the time I got it cleaned up. Too late to run it in the back yard. Well, I'll just run one prime out in the garage to see if it fires. It ran that prime out on the second flip...SHAZAM! OK, maybe 2ccs in the tank won't smell the garage up of castor too much! Man that thing starts easy (if not usually the right direction). and idles (not real slow, but hey, what do you want?) nice. Transitions were instant and rock solid. It takes a LONG time to burn 2ccs at idle. (quite so the neighbors don't complain!)

Here is a shaky, low quality video of the second start of the franken engine, cold after sitting for about 24 hours. Not bad for working with one hand while filming with the other!



This is even more fun than I remember!