Okay Pattern afficionados, here's the real deal. Ed Alt and I visited Todd Syssa at his shop Saturday to do some bench running of the engine. John Pavlick showed up later also.

Todd and his dad Al worked with us all day to run several pattern sized props as follows: 17x12 std blade, 18.1x10 std blade, 17x10 std blade, 15.75x11 3 bld, 19.1x11 std blade. We also ran Todd's standard Vess woodie 18x6 for comparison.

All of the pattern props were turned with authority significantly better than the 140RX can turn the same props. The engine was brand new out of the box so we were breaking it in at the same time as we ran these props. After a couple gallons, we'd expect another 100-200 rpm out of the top end. I brought the ES 40G pipe, which is intended to be used on up to a 40 cc gasoline engine. This pipe is highly recommended....the difference between it and a regular glow pipe is considerable although I've run a glow pipe on ZDZ40 with good results. The glow set-up gets very long, longer than our pattern models can accommodate in most cases. The gas pipe simply drops in place and it's tuned length is practically preset. The header was a standard Macs for an OS140RX, 2" rise, full length. The main baffle on the gas pipes is 27 1/8" straight line to the spark plug.

The day was cool, around 52F, sunny, a little breezy, with fairly high barometric pressure, with RH probably around 40%. The fuel was regular 87 octane gasoline mixed with Amsoil pro at around 80:1 mix ratio (1 pouch of oil per gallon)

Ed is compiling the data for a KFactor article. Let me tell you however that the engine ran stronger than the RX's and Webra 145's we've been running, across the board. Even the 19.1x11 was turned but that prop is too much load.

For the sport fliers, the engine made scary power with the 18x6 Vess prop. The boost on the pipe was about 1000 RPM over the stock muffler; about 9300-9400 rpm and 26 pounds of thrust. These were the strongest numbers we got which speak to the engine's potential. Pattern props would unload in the air to produce similar thrust. You could easily tell the engine was very happy running at this rpm

The sound of the engine on the gas pipe is very similar to a standard glow engine on pipe. We measured around 89 dBA at around 10 feet. An enclosed set-up as we normally run would produce lower noise

Todd and Al Syssa are great guys and are modelers just like us. It looks to me that Todd would support his products better than we normally see in this hobby. They are not in Italy, China, Check Republic or Japan. Recently for example, I bought the Mintor 37 cc gas engine to take a closer look. The engine will not work in pattern applications because the carb is located in a goofy manner protruding from the crankcase at an od angle. I tried for two weeks to send the thing back at a reasonable re-stocking fee and only managed to talk those guys down to 35$, down from 100$. That's not service

Back to the Syssa engine. This is an excellent way to go for models that are no more than about 10 3/4 lbs. Output is better than an RX or webra 145 or YS 140/160. The engine is built to last. Todd shared some of his design philosophy and I will tell you as an engineer myself for 30+ years, Todd has thought through many sticky issues in such an engine. Oh one other thing....we designed a way to build in an added support for the nose ring that would not interfere with the Hall sensor. So this will be offered as an accessory soon. Weightwise, the engine is on par with the 2 strokes mentioned, plus around 4ozs for the ignition module.

A great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. We learned an awful lot. One last thing...the engine was extremely smooth running through all rpm. We did not detect any resonance nodes but we still would soft mount these engine

Thank you Todd and Al Syssa for a great session

Matt Kebabjian