earlwb

Actually they do make new engines and parts castings. The Fox Eagle IV has a new mold for it that came out a little while back. I think they do most of the casting in the Winter as it saves on heating costs at their building of course. So they make lots of castings then. Molds do wear out over time, so they do have to make new ones now and then.

Now they do have some interest and help from the Russians for some things such as the ceramic cylinder sleeves and that special Fox .60 control line engine they have. So they could be expanding on that then too. That special CL Fox .60 engine is something of a retro design compared to the modern engines, but for control line it is perfect. They did have some unknown people design and develop their latest .40, .45, .60 and .74 RC carburetor, and that carb is really superb too.

Yes Fox is/was primarily a control line engine company. The engines all have a short front end on them because of their control line heritage. But Fox tends to make engines for function not form, so the engines are functional not made to be pretty, so to speak. The appearance seemed to affect them in the marketing as compared to some other brands that put styling into their engines, so much so that styling tended to outweigh the functioning.

Fox does sell some licensed versions of the Sachs gasoline engines too. Those engines are really superb as well. But I don't know what the technical difficulties were with their little .50 gas engine though. I was really wanting to get a couple of those .50 gas engines too.

But with the wars winding down, Fox may not be so overwelmed with other contracts to make things. So they might be able to spend more time making model engines. Hard to say though. The money is in the contracts versus model engines.

Now then some model engine companies have pretty much abandoned the modellers as they concentrated on government or military contracts instead. SoFox has been great in still supporting the modellers even with all those contracts.