Great to hear from ya Sewer. Miss reading your posts. there were 2 major things keeping me from going gas. Number 1 as always was cost and 2 was all the extra weight.After my "issues" with the Moki and I'll go right ahead and say the Issues are largley in part probably due to my own shortcomings, I started checking a little closer. The BME 44 I've chosen weighs 3lbs, 1oz WITH Pitts muff and ign. The O.S. 1.60 weighs 2lbs, 8oz according to the specs on Tower's site. I can live with 10 oz's as both are well within the wing loading. The cost of the BME was $0.00(traded it straight across for the Moki
). Will I be this fortunate next time...HECK NO! So we have the cost issue. I talked to a guy tonight who I was ordering some custom graphics from. He was telling me he has a DA50 and a DL50. He ran them both on the same plane with the same prop and spinner and got nearly identical readouts as far as thrust and rpm's. what I'm getting at(slowley)is that there are a lot of really good gas engines coming onto the market that well suit the needs of a sunday(and maybe wednesday) flier at a more affordable price. I think the DL is around $400.00 with muff, stand offs and ign. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Will we be seeing the big boys with a DL sticker on their birds, probably not. A novice at best like me would probably never be able to apprerciate the difference, But that DA sticker really looks cool on the cowl. What will be interesting to see is if a LOT of folks start using the DL's, CK's and such will their prices go up or will the DA's and 3W's come down. In a nut shell the way I see it a lot of the "cons" with the smaller gassers have worked themselves out. On the other hand my O.S. BGX-1 3500 is flat flying the wings off of my 80" Extra. It's among the most reliable motors I've ever had. In my case it was just easier to swap out the engine than totally rework the system I had. Guess I was just a bit lazy but given how it's turned out I'm glad I made the switch
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In absolutley no way do I mean to be or sound argumentative. Just wanted to share my experience and findings. When it comes down to it who cares how you have fun, just have it
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Again, great to hear from ya dude. You may crucify me now
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Happy flyin'
Rod