uliner

My Feedback: (2)

I was at EAA Kidventure last week working in the control line area. They use Norvel .061 powered Skybabies. KidVenture proves how tough these engines are. They fly about 6 hrs a day for 7 days. The Planes are punched into the ground, fuled and restarted hot and flew all week. Some of them are origional from 6+ years ago.

Sig sponsers the event by providing the airplanes, fuel and some kits to give away. I was talking to the SIG guy and got some real insite on what happened with Norvel

Norvels were made in a munitions factory. Times were bad so norvel was able to use the precision machining, plating and engineering services cheaply. Also they got all their material at the same prices as the factory was buying it at. It was a good deal for us and Norvel.

When the mutitions business picked up the factory didn't want the engine business, and Norvel got kicked out. As I was told in that location there was "no way" they could make the same engine for the same price and be a stand alone company. Norvel searched around for a long time but could not find a place to make them for a good price. He hoped someone would get a hold of tooling and get it made at a less expensive location (china).


Dave

ChicaWolverina

Thanks for that information! Finally! I know most people would be willing to pay 2 - 3 times what they cost to keep them in production. I don't know what sort of margins there would be on these but knowing how amazing they are and how loved that some way hasn't yet to be found to keep them in production. I always ask myself "Don't they get how important they where?".


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Tomasina

digital_trucker

That's why everyone who whines that "A 1/2A engine should cost no more than $50" should be lashed with an antenna and have 25% rubbed into the welts.

Until we accept the fact that this ISN'T 1960 any more and a good 1/2A sport engine (note I say good, as in well engineered, etc.) is worth at least $100 we ain't gonna get squat.

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

I don't think the demand for 1/2A engines will ever be great enough. As long as they can spit out larger sport engines for $60 that do nothing but run great, 1/2A wont get past cult status anytime soon. The mediocre 1/2A engines that are out there right now make matters worse because they dilute the demand. Everytime some sucker takes the bait for some below par engine, that is where "the bar" will remain.

ajcoholic

My Feedback: (10)

I have been thinking about this for a while..

When I started flying RC (after doing a lot of rubber and glow FF and some cl as well) back in the early 1980's, I was 12 or 13 and poor. I had a little $$ from doing odd jobs and whatever I made I spent on modeling.

I was attracted to 1/2A not because small planes were (at that time) cute, fun, or... but because they were CHEAP! I couldnt afford a .40 size kit, nor a 4 channel radio and the related gear. I did have a bunch of .02 and 049 engines already, and kits like the ACE Whizard, 1/2A Alpha (had two of each) and even scratch building RCM planes was economical and could be flown with my 2 channel Kraft and Futab radio gear.

I flew 1/2A because I couldnt afford to fly anything else!

Now, if I put myself into the position of a kid today trying to do what I did 25 yrs ago... assuming that they would also buy a $40 kit, and try to fly it with a $50 radio, having to spend $150 on a good, modern 1/2A engine would put me out of the ballgame.

I totally understand, a small market and the fact small engines need to be made to as good or better tolerance than a larger one, put the price higher than $50. WOuld I pay $200 for a kick-*** .049 today? Yes I would. But I also have the $$ to do so, that I didnt have when starting.

I dont think 1/2A is for beginners anymore. I think 1/2A is more for the type of guys you see here... tinkerers, visionaries , experimenters, scratch builders, designers and hobby-engineers. I think in today's economy if you want to start out in the hobby you are probably better to buy a $50 .46 engine and $100 radio and get an $80 ARF.

My point is, if someone would come out with a killer 1/2A engine, that ran extremely well - if it cost $200 to do so, it would no longer be the economical way into the hobby, and at the same time many regular guys wouldnt buy it because we are too used to paying $50 in the past for a decent engine. It will always be a limited market... sad but true.

I still am thankfull I bought those three VA MKII rc's when I did... the day of getting an engine like that for $75 is gone...

Sorry, I will stop rambling now..

AJC

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

AJ, makes perfect sense. Many other things have fallen victim to current economic situations, sometimes due to nothing other than a shift in the wind.
Consumer taste buds change.
The RC hobby has always been very fickle, go back through 20-30 years of magazines and look at all of the vendors who have fallen by the wayside.
Kind of ironic that 99% of all RC goods will be made in China......where maybe only 1% of their own products will ever get used there.

Norvel did not support their own products very well, such as a bag with a part in it with no description of what it is, and turning out engines that were too tight with no comprehensive instructions to the purchaser about how to make them really ready to run. So they shrank their market down to mainly the hardcore tinkerers. A little extra effort could have made them really take off, a lot of folks gave them a try and gave up after buying a locked up dud that wouldn't run right.

planebuilder66

My Feedback: (8)

Honestly, he's right, I remember when I built my first "real" r/c plane it was a ace whizard, sure I had no idea that ground feq's couldn't be used on aircraft but I tried anyway. Man, mode 1 is tough, but it did fly and I couldn't afford a 4 channel futaba back then, sure, I'd dream of having that pattern plane with a rossi and tuned pipe all the way to the tail screaming it's guts out doing 140 mph but I couldn't afford it at 16 so I settled for 1/2 A. I really wish a few manufactures would offer more easy to build or ARF 1/2a planes to the market with good cheap 1/2 a engines to boot. That in my mind would boost the hobby growth more than ever. Let's face it, I know a lot of people who have asked me how much to buy a small 450 sized heli like the one I fly, after talking to them for 20 minutes about the hobby they seem ok about everything until you tell them the battery price, then they think twice. Either the battery manufactures find a cheaper way to make the same betteries or I steer people to nitro power, with planes I'd have better luck convincing someone to go nitro than battery. 1/2A is inexspensive and easy to build, so it has two good things going for it, plus, most true 1/2A planes olny need 2 channels to fly.

ptulmer

My Feedback: (5)

dt, At it's earliest in 1953 the Babe Bee cost $4.98. Adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index that is $38.60 in 2007 dollars. I think it's too bad nobody is making reedies. I'd pay fifty for a great running beam mount/ tanked reedie. I'm probably in the minority there, though. If anybody knows dates and prices for a TD, that would be an interesting comparison. http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/

TFF

Shoot, all the kids in my club fly 25%ers or bigger. In the old days if you could field a plane no matter what, you were in the club; today if your not an up and coming 3der you dont fly planes.

planebuilder66

My Feedback: (8)

Sad isn't it? I say you ask anyone in that club to rebuild the 3d plane to original and cover it to look the same, they couldn't do it. That's the problem, alot of people say "build" but most of them just assemble a kit and gather info from others about modifications or assembly tips, they don't know why nor do they care to know why, all they know is it's 80 something inches wingspan and it can do harriers while in a blender, inverted! may I add. 1/2A is harder than it looks, but rewarding and cheap.

dennis

My Feedback: (90)

Actually it and the pee wee 020 were $3.95 the golden bee and super bee were $4.95
Dennis

gcb

Well, sorta. In 1953 Cox made the Space Bug Jr. @ $4.95. The Babe Bee was released in 1956, and the Pee Wee in 1957...but yes, they were $3.95 each.

Still have my Pee Wee from back then.

George

vicman

My Feedback: (10)

If I were a teenager trying to learn RC on a budget I'd be going electric and FFF. Sorry to pervert the thread but that is the cheapest most reliable way to fly I've found yet.

rainedave

My Feedback: (1)

Remember the full-page Norvel ads featuring Ace, Herr and HoB kits in MAN in the late '90s? I think they really tried to do that.

David

fritzke

My Feedback: (1)

Well, you can still get an Ace Grasshopper (for the moment...)
a TT .07 and a Futaba 3 channel AM radio (again, for the moment),
all for about $55 each. add in an extra servo and some hardware,
pint of fuel, Sullivan bulb and a starter battery, maybe around $225 for everything.

$225 is about $70 in 1975 dollars, so things are really about the same
or even better, since radios have become relatively cheap since then.
Back then a basic 2 channel radio (remember the Cox Sanwa
with the "mini" servos?) were $50, which is like $150 today.
Not so bad really. But you have to BUILD the Grasshopper, and learn how
to start and tune the engine....

How much is the RTF HobbyZone T28? AND which is cooler (to a teenager), a T28 you can
go fly in an hour or a Grasshopper you have to spend a week (or two, or three) building?
Heck, I would not mind having one of those T28s myself!

Dave

Mr Cox

But where is the fun in an RTF?
With those it is just of matter of who has the most money and no other skills are reqired...

I would take the build anytime, but maybe not the grasshopper...
(isn't that an ACE simple series anyway, should take more than a few hours, right?)

Back to the "topic", I too started with 1/2a because it was the only thing I could afford as a kid. It is not only the price of the engine, the small ones don't use up much fuel either and don't need a full fieldbox with electric strater etc.

I'm still into it because it is still relatively low cost, and yes I would pay 100$ for an engine that worked well, rather than having to buy two for 50$ each and hoping that at least one of them is a runner and then keeping the second for spares....

planebuilder66

My Feedback: (8)

Well,
no doubt that electric has come a long way and arf's are easy. Heck I fly a 450 heli because it's cheaper than nitro helis and I can fly in my own driveway. But I still love 1/2A nitro burning smell in the air and the stench of castor oil soaked in my jeans, call me crazy but I get really good memories of all the little planes I use to fly. I know on e-bey you can buy a bunch of used cox .049's and some new glow heads, buy a small kit like a sig hummer or grasshopper with a neon 3 channel or focus radio and there you have it! But the fact that I have to hunt down a used .049 and there are only about 12 true 1/2A planes on the market. Glow conversions from electric open the door for many options but all in all, I'd like to see cheap affordable 1/2A fun make a revisit like norvel tried but lipo seemed to drown it out too fast, before it could blossom.

stuntflyr

I bought two AP Wasp R/C 061's from Hobby People for $29.95 each during a sale and I'm having a hard time telling them apart from the Norvel. I use them in 1/2A Profile Multi Engined C/L Scale, an event in Tucson that my son flew his Norvel 049R/C powered P-38M in last year.
I find they run well, idle well, and retail for $49.95.

Is there something I missed that makes the Wasp a non-starter in the Norvel replacement category? Sure works well for me!

No Cox engine ever had an idle like these engines, BTW. I have had a lot of Cox engines and throttle was always a novelty, not an idle. We are in the golden age of modeling right now and everything we have is so much better than before. granted, the reed valve Cox engines were reliable for the era and I use them for the kids training programs some. But the Wasp and Norvel are so much better.

Chris...

planebuilder66

My Feedback: (8)

Last time I checked, the ap .061 which is nice, is no power house and not to mention it's 1 of only 2 manufactures offering a smaller than .10 engine, and they're 50 bucks a pop. I remember paying 35-40 bucks for a .09 tee dee. Now I need more 1/2a planes, or just start cutting and building from plans more, I guess I could set-up the router table and make some templates of a few planes or just scale down a few plans I already have, sig smith miniplane or the seinor, I think I still have plans for the RCM quickiee canard bipe.

Yuu

planebuilder66...Here's where you pop over to the 'Scratchbuilding and CAD' section and start drawing in CAD, then click the button to get the size you want, and 'print' any size plan you want. Read the 'stickies' at the top. It does have a 'learning curve', but each time you learn it's like a first flight with a new plane... pure joy. You can even pick up a free copy at deltacad.com for a 45 day free trial... if you want to buy, $40. to download. That's cheaper than driving all over to find the disc in the store...IF they have one. You can even 'import' a plan .... change the .jpeg to a .bmp, then 'import'.... then change the 'scale factor' number, and select, print. Five minutes of time and you need a razor blade and glue to keep building!

rainedave

My Feedback: (1)

Deltacad is AWESOME for CAD newbies. If you can use graphics software, you can learn Deltacad in a week. It definitely has the shortest learning curve of any CAD software I know of.

It only took me a couple of hours to draw up DB Mathews' 4-40 (one of my favorite planes). I can scale it to any size I want with a few mouse clicks.

David

KidEpoxy

Norvel wouldnt have to come back into the scene as a price competitor with Wasp & TT07.
It could easily be $20 - $40 more, because it is not the same perforance tier.

In a world where a TT07 was selling for $50, I would pay $75 for Norvel074 performance
... and I am one cheap sob, they are worth that price increase

Norvel has made their name, they can charge more than AP, and folks will pay it

digital_trucker

One thing about the Consumer Price Index to keep in mind is that it really isn't accurate. The numbers have been fudged down (comes from cherry-picking which items to use in the calculations). Besides, Peewees are fun and all....but it's nice to have a modern style engine. There simply aren't any aside from the PAY line and the TT07. The Norvel/Wasp R/C engines are basically C/L engines with R/C carbs attached. A real muffler is a necessity, mmkay? $100 is perfectly reasonable for a true modern 1/2A engine. WE've come a looong way from the '60s, folks.

ptulmer

My Feedback: (5)

I think you missed my point DT, I was simply pointing out that a mass-marketed engine with fewer "difficult" parts would be around forty bucks in todays dollars. And that "mass-marketed" part is VERY important to the price. Sooo... while our priorities may differ, for what you want out of a 1/2a engine, a C-note would be fair. For what I want, fifty bucks.

rockom

My Feedback: (2)

SO......

How would a person interested in aquiring the rights to the tooling and trade name contact Norvel?
Does anyone have contact info?

Thanks,
-Rocko