combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

I'll run my Norvel .074 for $100 a lap against ANY GILBERT POWERED plane. Anytime, anywhere.

lukesp

"It soars, it spins, it loops, it glides, it flies.............it's the WING THING! "


Man, I want's me one of them Wing Things, even the martians wave at it !

An I also want one of them "Plane Away" things. Just gotta have one.

build light

Say what you will, The Gilbert with the dual exhaust pipes just looks way cool. Plus the fact it was mfd. by Gilbert an true pioneer in the toy/hobby buisness witha great deal of interesting history behind it. Who hasn't had an Erector set? OK some of you younger folks may not have. However if you grew up and reached age 18 before the Atari video game system became popular, most likely you did if your family could afford to. I also had one of the Chemistry sets as well. One of the better ones. Also made by Gilbert.

I wouldn't place the performance as better than any equal size motor. One cannot deny that they do look so cool mounted in a period plane.

Robert

lukesp

Robert,

Although I believe you were talking to CombatPigg I was serious. I would love a Wing Thing ! Anything from the sixties is ultra cool in my eyes, even spirograph!

Anyone else here had Spirograph? Damn! I wasted enormous amounts of my childhood on that ! Always trying to draw that owl......... to hell with that owl!

luke.

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

Wings are cool and they fly great. A little boring after awhile, but great for combat. In post #11 it was stated that a Gilbert .11 will out turn a Norvel .074. If that was indeed true, the world would be beating a path to sleeve ported designed small engines. My G.11 is in top shape and it puts out 3/4 the rpm of a N.074 with a 7x3. Outside of mounting a G.11 on a powered hang glider, I can't think of another use for one?

mylamo

My Feedback: (1)

I bet the little sideport would make decent diesel conversion
Ralph

iskandar taib

My Feedback: (5)

I can, sorta..

Build a couple of British 1/2-A sized Warlords, put two Gilberts on them, fly them on 42 foot .012s with streamers, and have fun! Cheap, probably unbreakable.

qwerty3

Slightly off topic but - I just happened to come into a 'Wing Thing' from a neighbor cleaning out his closet. Does anyone have the instructions for it?
At the very least, where do you set the CG, to start out? Thanks!

tewitt1949

Combat, I also have a N .074 that I jsut picked up. Haven't put it on anything yet, but I did notice the glow plug looks like but is differnt from a regular 40 size plug. What kind of glow clip do you use? Something like a small cox clip? Terry

Jim Thomerson

A comment on the passing comment on the Johnson Bulldog 09. At about that time there was some serious talk about taking the various FAI competition classes down from 2.5cc engines to 1.5cc. I heard somewhere that this was the reason for the Bulldog. Incidentally the TD 09 is a 1.5 cc engines. Most US 09's are a little larger, as are the 10's, I suppose.

Dan Vincent

Jim,

That's correct. Another .091 was the Pogo.

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

I never understood the .09 size, but figured it was somehow competition related. Never would have guessed it was a size that never materialized for competition.

Dan Vincent

CP,

The old AMA class "A" was for engines up to .1999 ci displacement. Ray Arden made the Atom ingnition .09 engines and then the Arden .099. Back in those days these .09 engines had to lug heavy batteries around for the ignition systems so very few competitiors used the .09 for competition because a .19 was twice the displacement and carried the same weight.

In 1947 Ray Arden came up with the glo-plug which eliminated a lot of weight for an .099 to deal with but a .19 was still the best choice for competion within the "A" class limits.

At the same time, in England and Europe, the metric system divided engines into 1.0cc, 1.5cc, 2.5cc, 3.5cc and 5.0. Most European engines were diesels so there was limited interest in them in the USA. We did our thing and they did theirs.

1.0cc = .061ci
1.5cc = .091ci
2.5cc = .149ci
3.5cc = .201ci
5.0cc = .30ci

Not sure of the year but it was around 1951 when it was decided to have international competitions between countries and the FAI establised the 2.5cc (.15co) as the displacement to use.

Well, the USA guys were used to using .19ci enignes in AMA class "A" so the Americans had no .15 engine available. OK Cub came out with their .14 which was super light but down on performance from the European Diesels.

K&B then introduced their .15 Torpedo greenhead which starting setting new speed and free flight records. K&B showed the way that the glo engine could be very competitive and many Europeans started making glo engines to stay competitive.

Back to the .09 = 1.5cc. Although these engines have never had an "Official" class just for them in the USA they have been used in other countries. For example, the Australian 1/2A RC Pylon class included engines up to .11 and the OS .11 was about as good as it gets.

There have been 1.5cc classes in the UK and Europe.

Almost everyone I know who flew C/L, FF or radio has at least one .09 engine in their stable and it's pretty amazing when you consider there has never been an American competition class for them.

They are used in the USA as a sport engine and many guys, like me, didn't want to go any smaller when it came to lifting R/C weight. Now, with RC gear so light and stronger small engines such as the Norvel .061 & .074 and the MP-Jets .061, small RC is practical.

I have several hundred .09 & 1.5cc engines as that was the main size I liked when I started to collect.

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

Dan, thanks for the history lesson. It is interesting to hear that we lagged behind in international competition back then............and still do now . There must have already been a commercial or military use of platinum combustion catalysts before the glow plug was invented for model engines? What I'm asking is, was the technology already fairly well known but just waiting for someone clever to apply it to model engines?

Dan Vincent

CP, here is a little article on early model airplane glow-plug theory and application.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...08/ai_n9433814

I think Ray Arden jumped on this to make his famous Arden engines top performers in their class.

By the way, an Arden .09 has to be one of the loudest .09 engines ever made. I could always tell when someone started up an Arden.

longdan

The oil/gas refining industry has been using platinum catalysts for a long time. I think it was only a matter of time before someone tried it out in a combustion engine.

build light

I recently read an old article that mentioned briefly tha catalyst aspect of the glowplug. The article was about using a head designed for two glow plugs which therefore doubled the amount of platinum area exposed to the combustion chamber. It made all the difference in a throttled application where with only one glow plug the engine could not be brought back up from idle speed.

It does not provide the same effect as does using two spark plugs in a head. If this were so, not only would we have cars with four valves per cylinder instead of just two but also multiple spark pugs as well.
Spark plugs being being many times cheaper than engine valves I also imagine we would have seen engines with multiple spark plugs in regular production before they went to the trouble of adding more valves and the required cam lobes etc.

Before just a few nights ago I never knew of the catalyst value of the platinum! I just thought that that was what one must have to make the glow plugs work.

I just love learning new stuff, Robert

Dan Vincent

Fox made a bluehead .60 with twin pugs, also a .78 with a pink head.

I think Supertigre made a .71 or so with twin plugs.

Saw a Merco .61 with twin plugs but can't remember if it was factory or custom.

jessiej

Fox also made a two plug version of the "bathtub" .29.

I have a twin plug Merco. It is factory. I think they also made a .49 with twin plugs.

Dan, thanks for your posts and photos. Most informative and enjoyable.

Dan Vincent

Thanks Jesse,
I was thinking that if someone wanted to make a collection of twin plug engines, there wouldn't be that many to go after.

There might be others. Wish George Aldrich was still with us, he would have known.

build light

Not would I believe that a Gilbert .11 would out turn a Norvel but Here is an ad from Polk Hobby that claims that the Gilbert 074 would definitly out turn the .11.

Has anyone ever got as much as 18K out of a Gilbert .074? and the .11 they claimed from 11K to 16k! I admit, 16k is not a far reach but I still think a short one?

I wonder what prop they were using on the .074 to get 18k... an Octura out of water?

Robert

jessiej

One would probabaly be neat on an OT replica of some sort. Wouldn't be legal for 1/2 A Texaco or anything but it would look old-timey and I'll bet with those twin pipes you would get lots of questions.

jess

jessiej

I met George at a Nats at some point in the 50s. I didn't wash my hands for some time after shaking hands hoping that i would absorb some of his ability with the stunt pattern. Didn't work. Riley Wooten did,nt rub off either come to think of it.

jess

Dan Vincent

Robert,

I don't know if Larry Renger is still around this board but when he used to write a half-A column for Model Builder Magazine he also included engines up to .11 or .12 because they will fly the same small models.

Seems to me I remember Larry saying he got about 18K out of a Gilbert .11 but I'm sure it was a toothpick prop and wouldn't have been capeable of flying a model like the Norvel .074, so the Gilbert .07 may turn up with a tiny prop but what good is it in a model?

Thrust is the name of the game, not screaming RPM. Diesels usually run slower than their glo siblings but turn about an inch larger prop with less noise.

For some reason people equate RPM with power and it blows their mind when they see a good reliable Enya .09 haul a model around at a modest RPM. Folks have been tipping the old nitro bottle for years trying to get Cox TD engines to act like they're on steroids but that trade-off is loose piston sockets and overall short life.

jeffie8696

I picked up 4 Gilbert parts engines if anybody needs stuff. Took a real bath on em. If anybody has parts they want to sell or trade I could maybe get a few of mine running.[&o]