Chris,
Thanks for writing such a helpful article.
It's coming along nicely. If you havent already, you may wish to link to and put a link on the '1/2a all the way!' site. http://groups.msn.com/12Aalltheway

One thing I noticed that you might add is some mention of the importance of castor oil in the fuel for use in cox engines.

For cox engines, I believe it's generally agreed here that at least some castor oil should be present, for the benefit of the ball socket mostly. I used to be tough to find fuel with castor, but i think there may be a trend for fuel intended for 'nitro' rc cars to now include castor oil, as those poor dirty hot car engines need all the help they can get to survive. The castor oil is also available separately from Sig.

Growing up, one of the main frustrations I had while starting these cox engines for my toy control line planes was the glow battery to glow clip wire connection. Cox sells a battery holder--
http://coxmodels.com/prodinfo.asp?number=C00300

That kit is not too horridly overpriced I guess if you consider the other stuff that comes with it, but still over 10 dollars plus the shipping and wait for it to arrive.

Now that I have a proper soldering iron, I just solder the cox glow plug clip wires to a D cell.

I hate to admit, but in a pinch, I have rubber-banded the wires onto the battery! Works fine until the battery gets greasy in the exaust of the engine then the rubber bands sail off. Had to do that last Christmas when I also got one of those worthless 'cold heat' battery powered 'soldering' irons.