They have been there all the time, but all the advetising hype by those that could afford it, and all the talk about "great service" by the other guy eclipsed that fact. Nobody's ever exclaiming the virtues of great service if they never have to send an engine back.

RTK and I were having a conversation about engines the other night and he brought up a good point. It may be perhaps better for newbies to obtain their first gassers from companies with "great service", or all the others that are on the low priced side with the "copy cat" engines. The reasons you ask? Here ya go.

A newbie can do about anything they want that's wrong to do and send the ruined engine back to the "great service" company for a full, free rebuild. That's a pretty nice financial cushion for the new guys that don't know what they are doing or fail to read directions. A little hard on the company perhaps, but the customers will always have a back stop to protect them. Then again, eventually the "great service" company will have to raise the price of their products to offset a large percentage of those returns. That won't matter because they will already have the market convinced that their engine is the only way to go. As for the "copy cat, borrowed design" engines, they are low enough in cost that when a newbie burns them up or stuffs them into the ground they aren't out nearly as much as they would be for a higher performing, higher cost, engine.

Once those newbies gain a little experience in what they are doing then they could move on to bigger and better things, having gained all that experience at relatively low risk levels. As their experience levels go up there is much lesser need for factory service for two reasons. Number one is that the engine quality of what they stepped up to is superior to what they had in the beginning and don't break nearly as often, and number two is that their understanding of engine operations, thrust, rpm, prop selection, and the useless hp values provided by some manufacturers will have increased to the point they are no longer doing all the things that always wreck an engine. By that time they will have also finally figured out how to install a switch in an ignition system!

Awww, never mind, that was all just speculative and sarcastic thinking Forgive my wandering...