It's been a long wait, as I said last time, life has really gotten in the way. This project has been on the back burner for nearly a year after being conceived and built up in just a couple of weeks. Then my Epsilon daily flyer needed an engine upgrade, it was more work than I expected. Then an engine flight out put my Super Skybolt down in the deep weeds and I had some serious repairs to do. Then I found that my Epsilon really needed some major work and a recovering job after only 4 years of heavy use (go figure!) Okay, it's finally time to work on the Hotser. Oh wait, non-RC life got in the way for a while, and that's the worst of all!

But it's back in the front of the queue and work has been done. In the intervening many months, I have found myself the owner of a Jett Q500 engine so of course that is what will go on the Hotser. Since it's not a true race plane, I've swapped the Throttle Body Air Valve for the Jett red carburetor for better sport plane handling. On the test stand the engine was showing great promise. It was ready, the pipe had been tuned (the stock tuned muffler does not fit the airplane). I got that finished, put the flight prop on and it promptly threw a rod! The top end of the rod split vertically. Another delay! Dub Jett helped me out and did some beautiful work restoring the engine, what great customer support. He could have sold me new piston and cylinder but he fixed a bent sleeve, re-lapped and re-honed everything, tested the engine and he says it's running strong.

I've just finished re-working the throttle linkage, installation of the pipe mount and a few other details.

So here is the picture that's nearly a year overdue. The Hotser, in the bones. Pardon the cell phone pic. My old digital camera finally bit the big one.

The outwardly noticable changes from the original Hots are the drastically thinned airfoil (well, maybe not noticable in the picture), the shortened ailerons (dang, also not visible in the grainy cell phone photo!), the carbon LG, the racing wheels and of course the Jett power package. There other, non-visible, internal changes.

What's next? Next I pull the engine and start working on a plug for the cowl. Then vacuumforming the ABS cowl and fitting it. At that point it's covering time. Oh, still have to make the hatch cover and mountings.

I can hardly wait. I've always loved The Hots. It's fast and you can really slam it around. This thinned, lightened and upgraded version should be a ball.

Dave