First flight for the S.T. 51 Gasoline Conversion was this morning. The flight went flawless and I was very impressed with the power. I took the ST 40 off that I have been flying on it for years and I thought it was fast with that motor. I am swinging an 11" prop on it now so takeoffs are effortless and it climbs like a rocket. It sounded like it was turning more rpm's on the last flight so I tached it before calling it a day. It was up, but only 100 to 13,400. I can't complain as this engine only has about an hour and a half on it now and is probably still breaking in. I know I said in my last post I was going to tear it down for inspection at 1 1/2 hrs but it is running so good I think I will wait. I can't feel any slack in the rod when I move the crank back and forth so tear down and inspection will come later. I pulled one stupid move this morning. I bought a new fuel filter for it and forgot it at home so I flew without it. On my second flight it started sagging at full throttle and wouldn't go above idle by the time I got it on the ground. I cleaned the carb and all was well again so I flew without incident the rest of the morning. It is absolutely amazing how little gas it burns. On the test stand it was burning 3 oz in 10 mins at 3/4 throttle. I flew for over 30 mins this morning on the last tank. When I defueled, I got almost 5 1/2 oz. back out of a 10 oz. tank. Some of that time was doing touch and go's but still that is great on fuel economy. The temps were around 65 when I started flying and warmed up into the mid 70's by noon. I never touched the idle needle and after cleaning the carb the high would stay set OK for about 10 or 12 mins and then I would land and richen it up by about 1 click. It was running good at lower throttle settings but would lean out too much at full throttle. Ten minutes before having to readjust is OK for me. I know glow is better but I spent about 30 cents flying this morning as compared to 1/3 gallon of $16.00 a gallon 15% glow fuel in my other ship. I am running the oil at 16:1 until it gets broken in a little more then I plan to drop it down to 20:1. It is spitting little black specks on my plane now although it is one heck of a lot less mess than when on glow. More to follow.

Edited to add: The ST 51 Gas is in my SuperSportster 40 for testing. Also, I switched to mixing Synthetic with Pennzoil air cooled two cycle oil 50/50. The Pennz is what I am running in my Giant SpaceWalker with the G26 Zenoah and that way I can just add the appropriate amount of Synthetic to that mix (32:1) instead of mixing up a whole new batch just for the ST51.