Thanks for some of those tips guys and at the moment it seems that Ilya Leydman may be the best lead for information. Seems he used to operate Macheast from Sydney some time ago and on another forum someone managed to find his phone number in Canberra for me. But to bring you up to date with my sleuthing so far, MECOA said they believed they were made in St. Petersburg, Russia, but weren't 100% sure. Another link to an engine collection that I was referred to listed them under StassStels which simply had a photo of the SE version with no details. So I did a search on Stels which led me to that rather famous [link=http://www.mh-aerotools.de/airfoils/cox_frameset.htm]Cox[/link] web site and the listing for Small Engines. This started with the VA which was superceded by the Stels which bears a remarkable resemblance to the AME which later became the Norvel. All of them were made in St. Petersburg. It seems possible that with all these engines being made in the same city that there may be a link running through from Stass's to Norvel.

Max
Did your engine have an extremely tight pinch? Both my SE and RE versions were unbelievably tight but after much running in the RE is now a delight and has had quite a bit of use in a CL model.