RE: What was your first engine?
Thimbledrome 049 on a Plastic piper cub back in 1959 ,that name later changed to the Cox brand name. That engine never did run *LOL* Even the pro at the LHS couldnt get it to run for over a few secs at a time.
Unlike ED my second was a wen mac and it ran flawless on a corsair .But like many others have stated it wasn't until I got into the all wood CL planes that I learned what a real CL plane was supposed to fly like.