Originally posted by Woodsy
My LHS also does the lion proglow blended syn for about $10 a liter as well.

I just checked my costing, and it currently costs me approximately half that to blend my own 5% nitro all synthetic. I carried out a cursory check of retail blended fuel pricing when I intitially returned to R/C, went into sticker shock, and decided to blend my own as I always have. For myself, I would consider retail pre-blended fuel only with three provisos being met. (i)acceptable price differential, (ii) full range in availability of product, (iii) proven quality control. I think the latter has been achieved, but the former are sadly lagging, in Oz at least.

i'm thinking about going to a blended syn due to less mess what do ya think about this 75% meth, 5% nitro, 2% castor, 18% klotz any thoughts?

I typically run a very similar brew to what you've suggested for general sport & Sportsman pattern practice with my gammut of schnuerled TBR 40./.46 ABC, ABL, AAC types. (Enya CX 45AAC, OS 46FX ABL, OS 46SF AB(C)N, & ST S40K ABC. I get away adequately with a budget brew of just 5% nitro because I'm running those powerful oversquare two strokes designed to rev hard with smaller diameter props than a four stroke would ordinarily use.

Its proven that with competent tuning you can safely get away with less content running on all or nearly all synthetic. Nevertheless, I run 20% with those engines of which between 2 & 3% is castor depending upon the meniscus and my eyesight on the day. It's arguably more than actually required as a minimum, but I run the extra couple of percent as insurance. Given the price of a replacement genuine OS P&L for an 46FX in this country, an extra 2% synthetic + 2% castor is a relative bargain!

I use either Klotz or CoolPower, whichever happens to be available at the best price. I just finished my last batch of Klotz and am currently mixing with CoolPower. Similarly sometimes Castrol M, sometimes the Lion degummed stuff. I find needle setting is notably much more sensitive on that brew or a straight synthetic vs a 50:50 synthetic:castor blend. I've found it much less tolerent of a lean run, which is reflected in seemingly immediate demise of the glow plug should one err on the lean side. Like yourself, I really went to it because of the mess, and the disappearance of the significant former economic advantage of using a high base level of castor. Upon reflection, for beginners and low tech sport flyers not comfortable with competently tuning their engine, castor is a far safer and user friendly alternative despite the physical mess. Certainly for two stroke use. It's all we had once, and we managed.

with this blend i'm thinking of dropping down to 18%
77/5/18(2/18) total oil any thoughts on that?

Not sure of the total oil content you suggest here, but you can safely run 18% all synthetic in a two stroke in my personal experience and according to Powermaster's FAQs et al. Just take care to take the time to tune to avoid a lean run and discipline yourself to land if the engine goes abnormally lean in flight. Don't be tempted to continue the flight with it running that way. Throttle back, land and correct it immediately.