RE: Mini Temperature Guns! The "Hottest" Thing
Where Mr. Faust has a good point for checking hot spots around his jet, for most of us using our single glow motors and small twin gassers in airplanes, the ear, a tach (to detect reduced performance mainly, the ear is better for daily tuning), and a little bit of experience is the best answer.
To reduce my thoughts on some simple points, ground temps and flying temps are totally different (not combustion temps but on the cooling fins themselves), and flying temps change radically dependant on throttle settings and nose attitude. Over running tightly cowled motors on the ground will often cause overheating that never occures in the air. The propellor does not push as much air across the baffles as does the low pressure, fast moving air across the exit will pull through the cowl intakes.
On another viewpoint, many modellers are gadget fanatics so why spoil their fun? If they want to take their motor's temperature then I say "have fun".
Gadget freaks are to blame for most of the nifty inventions we play with anyway!!!
Mark