Understandable questions considering my quarries.

I am 34 years old. I have been flying sice 1994. I have never been much of an engine guy. I have never had a lot of help in this area. I find most people claim to have this vast nowledge, but can never actually share it with me. Then, there are the people that can look at the thing without even firing it up and tell me to lean/richen it out, and they're right!

I have generally found 4 strokes easy to tune on my own, but I have fried a K&B .61 and a Magnum .46 two stroke. I even used the pinch test, heard a significant rpm increase (ON the K&B), and still fried the stupid thing. The magnum baffles me. It would lean out 1/2 way through each flight. I am told that the baffle in the muffler needed to be drilled out. I switched to the 4 stroke before I tried the fix. For some reason, I can get the 4 strokes to work.

My ST .51 and .90 fired up straight out of the box, and the adjustments I made there actually work. It leave a nice oil trail in the air that looks just like a little smoke.

I aquired my HB.61 PDP through a trade. Rather than try to break it in myself, I had a friend in Denver that was a wiz with engines I I gave it to to break it in for me. When getting it back to Minnesota, a slight adjustment was all that was needed on the high end, and WOW it ran well. But camparable to my Magnum .61 XL and my ST. 51, the economy is REALLY bad. Thus proving the addage- if you want power, you will pay for it.

My friend in Denver explained how the Perry Directional porting works. Even he was impressed with the power the HB PDP put out. Unfortunately, he passed away last month in an ultralight accident.

Until falling into classic pattern ships, I trained on a Telemaster (1994), a Tiger 60, flew a Goldberg Cub, 3 smith miniplanes (Yes, I enjoy building), a Hog Bipe, a GP Super Skybolt, a sportsman aviation corsair, my ever reliable GP stick, and built flown several other aircraft (which I can list if desired). I am bored with simply throwing an airplane around, but have found I am not impressed with the costs of modern pattern. I have, however, discovered I really like the older pattern designs and the way they fly- ON THE WING!

Hense, the venture into getting a handle on the two cycle engines. I have a few that that I can get running well, and run well at the moment. So I would like to get the proper setup on my UFO, Kaos, Miss Norway, and my J-Bipe. For me, except the J-bipe which will receive my .91 Magnum 4 stroke, "proper" means tuned pipe. The extra rpm and power are needed for the vertical and knife edge maneuvers anyhow.

I can fly them just fine. I am less confident on getting my 2 stroke set-ups right.

Too much information?

Brian