Hi Attie,

Since no one else has piped up , I will throw my $0.02 in. First, I have never made a tuned pipe for an aero engine. All my experience is with motorcycle engines. But a 2 stroke is a 2 stroke no matter what. Several things to know:

1) 2 stroke pipe design is quite a black art and requires a lot of experience and knowledge, combined with software and testing/tuning to really make it work well.

2) You will very probably screw up a few and have some failures on the road to success, so don't get discouraged. It's never as easy as it looks and I guarantee the commercial pipe suppliers had problems and failures getting to market, too.

3) It is virtually ALWAYS cheaper to buy a product in commercial production than to re-invent it yourself. You will NOT save money in the long run unless you place no value on your time at all. However, it can be very satisfying and rewarding to do it yourself and you WILL learn a lot regardless of the outcome, which is worth something in this day of $3000 ARF toys.

That said, unless you are willing to spend time buried in a textbook or two and buying software, your best bet for a successful pipe is to copy one that you know works. Not as exciting as a new design, but much simpler, faster and more reliable.

If you want to really do it all yourself, check out:

Design and Simulation of Two-Stroke Engines by Gordon Blair ISBN#1560916850

Available from the Society of Automotive Engineers, www.sae.org

For software:

http://www.iwt.com.au/MOTA.HTM

I have an older version and it works pretty well for the cost and gets you into the ball park at least...


Mark