All glow engines will run quite well with just methanol and oil (gotta have the oil ) but to make the most of just methanol you need quite a high compression. Nitro adds power to an engine but it doesn't like much compression so because nitro is cheap in America and everyone wanted to use it, the manufacturers had to make engines with a fairly low compression. I've only used nitro once in the last 50 odd years but that was in a racing event so I can forgive myself there . So basically, nitro is just an additive to the most important part of the fuel which is methanol.