jerrysu31, thanks for the comments ... as painful as they are to hear. I am aware of the ... uhm ... colorful ... history of the MDS line of engines (trying to be nice here). You may be right.

I have read many posts on MDS engines and the dead stick problems. I was hoping the issue was related to the old style carb design/mounting. A review of a the MDS Pro Series manual even includes a big warning regarding O-ring inspection - so MDS actually had to put precautions in the manual to deal with that issue. No doubt MDS has had some problems.

But this is the 2.18 we are talking about. The 2.18 has the new design carb. The 2.18 manual does not even mention O-rings. This new design could solve all of those dead stick issues. This could be the engine that restores customer's faith in that MDS reputation ... Ok ... perhaps I'm getting a bit carried away.

But, so far I see only positive comments about the 2.18. Unfortunately, most of these seem to relate to running well on a break-in stand. So it is still early - really early. We need some more flight reports.

Moses

Edit: I got distracted by work ... I was responding to post #3 and all the other posts got in before me ...