Originally Posted by
harriermate
Guys,
Thanks for all the extremely useful advice. I just need to order one now! 😇
I own many glow and gas radials and have flown several. One of my favorites was my Technopower 9 cylinder. It was meticulously broken in and run with a McDaniels (Sonic Tronics) 9 cylinder glow driver.
The beauty of on-board glow is that I could start the engine with nothing attached to the airplane; just switch on glow and fire it up.
With glow on, the engine would idle down to 900 rpm.
Without glow, it would idle reliably at 1200 rpm.
In the event the engine would drop a cylinder in flight - which could be heard by the drop in rpm - a flip of the GLOW ON switch would have it running again... although the Techno was very impressive in this regard, as that was rarely needed.
I had similar results with a UMS 9-90, 9 cylinder glow, also a VERY nice running engine.
I have also run the Seidel 5-40, Magnum 5 cylinder, and O.S. Sirus 5 cylinder, all glow.
All are mechanical marvels and a joy to run and fly.
That said, I MUCH PREFER my gas radials for all the reasons already stated.
Now, I COLLECT glow radials and RUN gas radials. IF given a choice in radials to go out and fly, GAS wins hands down.
