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My Feedback: (4)

I see you've conveniently forgotten about the ignition battery. Let me set a few things straight.


1: I might have to charge those once every few months? I honestly can't remember the last time I had to charge them and they're still fully charged.

2: Charging them is simple. Hook to wall wart, forget about overnight. I really don't see why people get into such a tizzy over something so simple and thought-free, it's not like you're charging a LiPo here. It's just a single sub-C NiCD. It's not rocket science, a three year old could charge a glow ignitor without trouble. On top of that, I have two, one of which will accept a bog standard AA, so even if they are discharged I can just toss any old AA into it and get the motor going regardless.

3: You're forgetting about the ignition battery, unless you're implying magneto ignition, which drives the weight up. I wouldn't run a single battery for both unless I had a generator fitted as well, less the engine drain the Rx pack and cause a crash.

4: I hate profile planes. They look stupid at any angle other than 90 degrees to either side, everything's all exposed to the elements, and they're quite weak about the yaw axis. Much more so than a traditional fuse, if not, they wouldn't need carbon fiber stiffeners to keep the rudder from snapping the tail off. Oh, and if you're wondering why everything being exposed to the elements is a concern, I'm a 24/7/365 RCer. I don't care if it's raining, if there's three inches of snow on the ground, if it's three in the morning or if it's 120 degrees out. If I want to run, I'll run, and having a normal fuse lets me fly in weather that would otherwise see the aircraft under a tarp in the pits.

5: You couldn't give me a DLE and expect to see it on an airplane, I'd probably bolt it into my string trimmer or something. Maybe put it in a 1/4th or 1/5th scale car. Somewhere where a failed rod bearing doesn't confer a 50-75% chance of vehicle destruction. I demand mechanical reliability out of every engine I own, regardless of size, and I've seen faaaaar more DLEs throwing rods than I have the other gasser brands combined. And that's just RCU. Are they good engines? They must be doing something right if they're the first thing anyone quips when someone mentions an airplane larger than 20C, but the weak internals that have no patience for mistakes mean I wouldn't even use a free one on anything airborne. I don't abuse my engines but nobody's perfect, and I insist on engines that don't explode the first time someone makes such a mistake. Cough, sputter, stall, cut out, I'm fine with engines doing that when I make a mistake at the carb. Tells me I need to rectify that mistake before something does go pop. But if it throws the rod bearing or shears the crankpin off because of that? Goes from running beautifully to needing an overhaul because of one momentary lapse of needle judgement? Hell no. Not in my hangar. Rather pay the premium for an OS GT33.

6: As I said, my hangar is going to be limited to nothing larger than .60 sized aircraft. You can't fly these on gasoline, the engines just aren't small enough. There's boatloads of nice giant scales out there, but storing, transporting and field assembly is FAR too much of a hassle. I want to be able to park my plane in the bed of my truck, fully assembled, tie it down so it's still there when I get to the field, and fly that. I want to be able to pick it up out of the bed, put fuel in it, fire the engine up, and take off. I don't want to spend half an hour putting it together first. As it stands my NexSTAR is a couple inches too big for that, I have to either set it in diagonally or take the wing off, and it's just a .46 glow trainer! Warbirds have smaller wingspans, up to 60 size would fit as well, but yeah. That's about the limit, if it's larger than a Hobbico NexSTAR chances are I won't be flying one.

7: I'm not flush by any means. The cost of the airframe and the cost of the parts plays a huge role in what I fly as well. Spin it however you want, you can't argue that an aircraft accepting of a DLE20 is going to cost far more than the same type of aircraft that warrants an OS 46AX, and even the latter took me a few months to save up and get put together. I simply can't afford a gasser even if I wanted one. And no, the fuel savings would not pay for that airframe in a reasonable time frame.


To put it simply, If I'm going to fly gas, it's going to be with a genuine radial of some sort, or perhaps a four stroke twin, not an overglorified string trimmer engine, and I won't be flying gas until I get a lottery win.