G'day everyone. I have about 50 glow and diesel engines. I have been playing with engines for over 50 years now but today I went right back to basics and ran my new OS LA 46 for the first time. I did it as a sort of experiment. I have been advocating that beginners use these in their trainers for some time and the ones that I have seen have always been a success but I wanted to try one for my self to put in a trainer I was given and which I intend to use in my teaching.

Why the LA 46? They are relatively cheap (this one cost me $115 in Australia), they are simple, they are quite crash resistant and they are a good introduction to glow engines for beginners.

I decided to give it a run before putting it in the plane so I bolted it to my test stand, filled it with my usual 10% nitro mix, fitted the OS #6 hot plug, filled the tank, gave it a few chokes, attached the glow starter and flicked. It spluttered but did not start. It was very tight at the top and still a little dry so I turned to the electric starter. On the third attempt it started with the throttle just slightly open. I did not move the needle as I wanted to see whether it would start and run "out of the box". It did and the "out of the box" setting proved to be ideal for running in. Plenty of oil came out the exhaust and the engine did not become over hot when tested with my "digital thermometers" (fingers).

It was slightly rich and ran at about the two stroke/four stroke boundary and within about half the tank it would idle well and run up to about 80% throttle well.

I am going to give it a couple of more tanks and then fly it set a little rich. I think I could fly it as it is now but I think it will be better with some more running.

I am really impressed at how well it started and ran right out of the box. Even though I had changed absolutely nothing, I think it would have flown the trainer.

Mike from Oz

Corrected the nitro from 15% to 10%