Hi Dar,

You are very reasonably concerned about the Cost and then I believe you might be interested
to read this. I will try to prove that your concerns are very good, but valid only for the "TopGuns"
in the RC fields, who are very rich or have very rich sponsors. For the others that is not the
quite the case.

I was going to change to Gasoline couple years ago but then the World's all kind of "events & games"
changed the calculations. I.e. I agree in general but in particular the things are not so bad (7 times),
they might prove the other way around if we look again into the Calculations. And that is not
only in Finland; the prices are currently going into different direction and I guess that is quite the
same for EU, USA and the rest of the world.

First, I am not buying ready fuel, that is too easy money for the makers and too expensive for me.

Second, the pure Nitro is already under heavy restrictions due to its "side" applications. It is
not so needed for general hobby people. I am just replacing the shim under the head or even removing
it totally and use a bit warmer glow plug. The performance of my several OS.91FX is same, in fact
only 200-300 rpm down when there isn't nitro, i.e. from 11800 down to not less than 11500
on Graupner-G-Sonic or wooden Maro 13x7 with the standard silencer.

Then here is my calculation:
1 liter Gasoline is 1.35 Euro, Methanol is 0.8 Euro. Oil for gasoline has negligent cost, Castor is 4 Euro/liter.
Then 1 liter of fuel for gas-engine is almost 1.4 Euro, and 1 liter of glow fuel (80% methanol 20% castor) is
then 0.64+0.8=1.44 Euro. Then ratio of prices for gas/glow is almost 1:1.

For small gas engines the rotating magnet is too heavy (about 200g), ignition system is too expensive
when compared to price of engine. My McCulloch 28cc cost 56 Euro new (!) with the brand new Walbro
on it... And the ignition system with battery etc would go easily over 150 Euro. Sure, the ignition timing
is better and gives more power and saves weight a bit (battery is needed) but ...

Second hand and almost new OS BGX-1 on eBay is at the range of 150,- Euro and has resources
almost for ever with about 4 bhp. New MVVS 26cc is in the range of 180-200 Euro and has the
same power almost. Still, gasoline version of MVVS-26 is about 250-300 euro and adding the
ignition system it gets almost more than 2x price of the methanol one.

Next trouble is the Receiver. Without Sparks around almost any receiver is doing quite OK unless some
wants to "drop" me down. With Sparks, especially from Electronic ignition systems all kind of shielding
are needed, and the price of the receiver is about 1.5x up, from 50 Euro to at least 80 Euro.

By now it is oblivious that the ratio is not 7:1, it is the other way around and it is maybe
worse than 1:1, something like 1:2 if not further worse for gas users.

And then if you add the Fire hazard on Gas is maybe too many times more than for Methanol.
Methanol is too "lazy" to catch fire - we tried to put a fire cracker and then a fire torch in the
canister with 15 % nitro Coolpower and there was no effect; well we just filtered the fuel and
used in the flights after all...

Conclusively, gas seems very good for anything which is Large Scale or at least bigger
displacements than 50cc, while for under 40cc Methanol is still the King and the RC model
of a size of up to near 2.2 meters(80 inch) span and less than 10 kg is pretty impressive in
many ways.

Well, I am not in the sales business and I do not know what the majority of the buyers
want; that is something I cannot comment on. Still it looks to me that there is pretty
unused and cheap"gap" in RC planes for the engine sizes between 20-40 cc.

Regards,
Nick