Good heavens ! Someone has woken the thread up again

I have seen numerous comments online from those who have similar experiences as you did, either by phone or email.

Homebrew fuel.... it's all been done before, many times over the years.

Basically.... ether, kerosene and a decent lubricant plus just a couple of % of ignition improver will give you the basic ingrediaents for a model diesel fuel. There is no "black magic" involved, the main U.K supplier of model fuels even puts the percentages used in their mix on their website.
Check out modeltechnics.co.uk to see the percentages used.

High ether 30% , or more,will give easy starts, cool running and good throttling.

A lower ether mix of 15% will also start fairly easily will run pretty cool and will give good throttling, or it did in all the PAW engines I have tried it in.

You can run without any ether at all BUT.... starting requires 2 or 3 primes with a high ether fuel and compression and needle settings are a bit more "touchy" to set up.

The big problem I found with very low, or non-ether fuels, was increased exhaust noise. The increased kerosene content causes the engine and thus the exhaust gases to be a lot hotter.

A simple test.... get a small quantity of commercial model diesel fuel. Dilute it with extra kerosene to reduce the ether content to 15% while also adding the correct quantity of castor oil, or 20W50 engine oil to keep the oil content at 24% or so. Now give it a try !Be prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

I have started converting my planes to electric power, the reason ? Cost of model diesel fuel here in the U.K. It has gone up by $7 a 1/2 gallon in the last couple of months. It will become increasingly expensive and then difficult to obtain.

I am keeping some of my diesel engines but I do believe that the days of the diesel are numbered, apart from a dwindling number of die-hards. Glow engines are also coming under increasing pressure due to the noise of most two strokes.

Reg