Tonight we have some clarification and refinement of the procedures for making Biodiesel fuel. Some random pictures to illustrate. First, an adaptor was made to make the settling and draining of the unwanted materials much easier to do, with less mess.

The second and third picture shows what you get settled out after the lye/meth treatment.

During the washing process, during the latter stages, the settling takes longer as the soap scum gets real heavy. Fourth and fifth pictures.

Six and seven shows the soap scum that the washing takes out.

The finished product is consierably thinner than the original oil, naturally. It's still thicker than a proper, all three, diesel mix but we'll see. Right now it's still cloudy, hopefully another night of settling out will make it less so. However it looks though, I'll try running it tomorrow.

A trip to the Supermarket in the bottled water section revealed some neat, clear plastic jugs from one litre to 5 to 11 litres, all with handy handles. If the fuel works and gives us an advantage, this allows making up gallons at a time. A week's worth of part time work, off and on, could produce four or five gallons for a decent season's flying. Cheap too. If it works.

OK, why am I so obsessed with a no ether fuel? Simple. Five years ago, the price for commercial fuel was 60 dollars a gallon and that was without any shipping charges. Shipping has to be by truck and that's costly. Even when running small engines like 1/2A you can see that that's all you'd run. And even mixing your own restricts you to 1/2A due to the cost of the ether. So I DO want to fly .40 sized airplanes powered by diesel. No way to do that at a reasonable cost.

In the end, I may have to resort to a mechanical solution to the throttling problem when using no ether fuels. Thanks to Kelly, at least I have this one last option. The trick to that though, is to devise a way to adjust both the idle CR and the top end CR independently. Between the two of us we have it on paper. Now it's up to me to make the damn thing.

I'm resisting because it's not the kind of thing that anyone can do for himself. A homemade fuel mix from common materials gives everyone the opportunity to fly diesel at a reasonable price and allows them to find out what a REAL engine can do for their flying creations.