Yeah, I remember my old two stroke dirt bike days.... I was young and always had to try and tweak the engine for that very last ounce of horsepower, and it usually cost me a piston and a bore job... [] I'm sure you are familiar with that old saying; "two stroke engines run the best right before they blow up!" But I sure learned a lot and had a bunch of fun!!

RE your engine. Once you get done playing (experimenting) with it and get serious about putting it on a plane, you might want to think about decarboning it and putting in a new Frank Bowman ring. Every used engine I've ever pulled apart needed a new ring for optimum performance, and on an airplane every little bit counts.... There is a fairly easy mod you can do whereby you send your piston to Frank and he pins it for use with a notched/pinned piston ring. Then you can grind the bridge out of the exhaust port for much better flow. It's a really good mod for these engines.

Here's my old Homelite 25cc story...
I once went to a small engine shop looking for engines and they gave me an old Homelite string trimmer. Really grungy and old and beat up. The gas in it smelled horrible and was probably years old. I thought "Well, if nothing else it's a good parts engine." I brought it home and it was laying on the patio floor. My brother stopped by later and slowly pulled the rope to feel how much compression the poor old thing had. IT STARTED UP!! My brother and I just stood there with astounded looks on our faces, while the damn thing layed there on the floor running!

AV8TOR