Not to knock our favorite engine, but....

I used to have a video of my buddy Dave and his Wen Mac Dauntless we flew after changing the prop to a Cox fiberglass 6x4 and Cox red can Racing Fuel. The NIB 049 Mk IV grunted out some nice torque and flew that big old NIB (just out of the box) Dive Bomber just fine. It was a lot of fun to fly it for it's first times it had ever flown, and how it handled was interesting (we flew it on .008 35 foot lines with wire leadouts) with it's interesting elevator hinging system. We thought it would do round-the-pole just fine it was so stable.

I think the main problem with Wen Mac RTF's power to weight vs flight were the versions with the triangular bladed props don't seem to generate much thrust and bog the engine.

The Day Fighter I have had the elliptical planform 2-bladed 6 inch with a very thin section and it allowed many a happy flight when I was a grade schooler. Even better with the Cox racing props and Tornado props.

I usually had Cox Racing Fuel as a kid because i flew 1/2A Proto and that's what dad bought for me, so the old Wen Mac design does respond well to nitro, just like my OK Cub.
Chris...

As I posted in my other thread, I was happily surprised how my old Testors .049's did with a Cox 5x3. They start easier than my reedies, but they're front rotary engines rather than reed, so not a fair comparison. At 17.7 and 18.6K, I'm willing to experiment further. But they'll never replace my Cox engines as my go-to powerplant.

But, last night I threw a couple of old, seized pipe bomb engines in some fuel to soak for a couple of days. I'm still trying to figure out a good mounting strategy for these pipe bombs. So far, I'm thinking about carving a hardwood block down to encapsulate the engines, although it'd be pretty heavy. Another alternative is to bed the engine like I would bed a rifle action in a stock using J-B Weld. Or, just take the engine to Home Depot and find a piece of PVC pipe that has an inner diameter the same as the pipe bomb case, and using a heat gun and some hand tools, make a mount. We'll see.

The Led Astray Mark

It's been a while, but as far as I remember, these Testors McCoy/Wen Mac engines with glow head were decent running engines and reasonable powerful as sport engines, at least as good as a Babe Bee if not better. Like anything, when propped right they do justice, but that is a universal truth with any engine and properly mated to the right airframe with the right fuel.
An airplane is really happy when the engine is happy.