DenverJayhawk

electric = no dead sticks. Very attractive to the new pilot.

Cheap lipo packs have more or less negated the cost arguement. Yes, you'll never get equal flight times from a lipo pack when compared to fuel though. But for me, i have a very limited time to fly when i'm at the field. Usually 2 hours at most on the rare weekend i can get away and normally less than an hour or so if i go to the local park by my house to fly the foamies.

Electric allows me to get to the field, pop a battery in, get a flight, swap the battery and do it all over several times. Then i throw the plane in the car without worrying about clean up and i'm off. EP works perfectly for me, but not saying it's for everyone. I also have a power supply and charger that allows me to charge up to 6 lipos at a time in under an hour. In the time i'm at the field for two hours or less, i often fly 2 to 3 times more flights in that span of time than the other guys that are there to make a "day" of flying. Granted, when they fly, they are up for 10 mins at a time though, which would be nice.

Once my two young girls are older and i have more time, i fully plan to own some gassers to take with my electrics when i "make a day" of it at the field.

Radical Departure

My Feedback: (13)

A fad?? You mean like the hoola-hoop? Pet rocks? I strongly doubt that Desert Aircraft, 3W, DLE, and so forth developed engines and manufacturing facilties to support a fad. What about all the planes designed around gas engines.. thats part of the fad? This topic gets tossed out there by some Nitro junkie about 4 times a year, where its then beat silly to only end up at the same conclusion... fly whatever you want to.

I've never flown Nitro, why should I? I'm content to use electric for .40-.60 size birds and typically gas for anything above that. I don't for a moment believe gas engines are far more complex than Nitro. Fire it up, set your needles, break it in, make one or two final tweaks to the needles and DONE. Meantime I've watched guys spend 1/2 their time at the field trying to get some glow motor to stay running. Sure gas engines need work at some point, but IMHO the frequency is far less. When my DA starts acting funky, I'll send it to DA and never think twice about it, because by that time I've got a couple years of solid reliable flying on it, so whats one pit stop out of all that time. Nitro, Gas, Electric, Hamsters.. whatever.. just keep on supporting the hobby and have a great time with it!!

cutaway

I've seen plenty of electrics dead stick at our field.

Cooked motors, fried ESC's, fly too long and the ESC shutsdown the high draw motor, etc.

ec121

My Feedback: (2)

My vote is that the larger gassers may fade some. There is a market for the large gassers, but I don't believe it has the potential of the smaller sizes. I think the 50cc and down sizes will grow. Especially the 20-30 area. Airframes are more available. Planes are easier to transport. And after all on a nice Sunday afternoon any stick time is fun. I am not going to replace my 33%ers when their time comes. I am pretty much a weekend flyer and am happy with about any fueled plane. For me the electrics just don't have the "personality" of the fueled planes.

cutaway

Those are generally the same people who have problems with every aspect of their gear and mechanical setups.

I flew 8 flights in the past 2 days. I flipped my engine (a LA .46) hot with the igniter attached a grand total of 9 times. I was really pissed off that I had to flip it twice that one time.

378

My Feedback: (4)

As I said above, that's a PEBKAC error, not a problem with the machinery. People make the mistake of tuning for numbers and/or buying crappy, poorly made paperweights, and in either case they're going to end up with a finicky little waste of money.


My glow engines get adjusted twice a year. Once in spring, once in fall. Other than that I don't touch the carbs, and they run just fine. Are they making peak power? No, they're set a bit fat. Do I care? Nope, these donuts/barrel rolls are too damn much fun.

When your DA starts acting funky it's something stupidly simple like a worn out plug. No need to ship it back over something like that.



Except that it isn't. My NexSTAR, which is packing a 46AX, is already too big to fit in the back of my truck intact. A 90-size(You're insane stuffing a 20cc on a 60 size trainer, save that for the warbirds that are built for speed) trainer is going to be enormous. To compound this, not everyone has a pickup, some people have to stuff their aircraft into a small car or minivan, where you just can't get a very large airplane to ride very well.

opjose

Yup I agree.... been there all TOO many times trying to help others with their glow engines...

DenverJayhawk

true, that can happen. But those deadsticks are simply because someone didn't match proper equipment. It wasn't because of lack of experience with engine tuning.

Deadsticks on fuel engines are far more common than a cooked electrical component.

MTK

What the heck...I'll play too! Having flown glow for 40 years, mostly in competition, I never thought I would change my habits. Well, dabbled in electric and that's as good a powerplant as there is available today, but didn't care for it for whatever reason. They work fine on foamies but for large competition models, you have got to be much more careful with batteries and baby them, nurture them

Two years ago I made the move to gas powered competition models and am having a ball figuring these things out. I now fly avgas BTW which eliminates the gasoline stench. I find many positives compared to either glow or electric

So, no, I don't believe its a fad any more so than electric is a fad or glow for that matter. These powerplants (all 3) are here to stay and as far as I am concerned, the more options we have the better

reo

My Feedback: (130)

Gasoline engines have been around since the Byron Original days in the 70's and 80's....hardly a fad especially with all the new and interesting 20cc and 30cc stuff that has come on the market lately. No mess, easy to start and run and reliability.

JeffinTD

A person can set up electric power poorly and fry something.

A person can run a gasser lean, or not know how to tune it properly, and have problems.

A person can also have problems with glow engines.


For electric I run mostly Gens Ace as they are cheap and can be charged up to 5c. With a 4 bank field charger...

Nitro wise, I have an OS 46 that starts instantly and runs perfectly. On the other hand I have an Evolution 1.00 that gives me fits. I can tune it so it is a couple hundred fat from peak, transitions smoothly, and runs strong. It still dead sticks. You will have it running seemingly perfect one time, and the next time you start it it may be lean, or blubberingly rich.

Cleaned carb a couple times, tried different glow plugs, various fuels. Replaced fuel stopper as the one it was showing age, along with new fuel lines safety wired on. Still wouldn't run reliably.

Added on board glow driver. Still an unstable running motor, but didn't dead stick.

Anyway, I don't think everyone seen having trouble with a glow engine doesn't know how to tune one.

A flying buddy with lots of experience and many excellent running ow motors has also tried getting this one to run right.

dphillips3

I love them all! I have several of each. Except the turbine. (but I am not against them) Lets don't categorize none of them. They are all fads if you quit using them.

Hell I know some people that couldn't keep a rubber band engine running!!!!

DP#3

acdii

Mine all ran backwards, and I dont know why!

Granpooba

My Feedback: (5)

Electric replacing 60 to 90 glow engines ? Never happen for us die hards that love the noise and the smell ..............

OliverJacob

My Feedback: (12)

If a newbie wants to start flying with a gasser, then go for it. More likely it will be the more costly solution then a small glow plane.
The gas engine uses less fuel, but needs more attention and it does not take a 'hard landing' as easy as a 2 stroke glow engine.
If you are one of the pilots, who never break anything, the gasser is the way to go.
I like my gas engines and my 4 stoke glow engines, but for the start, I'd still get an 40 size trainer with a 2 stroke glow engine.
They are easy to tune and can take a beating. And in the worst case, they are cheap to replace.
 

flyalot

My Feedback: (63)

Gas engines were here before the glow engine existed. Not a fad just a resurgence!

TexasAirBoss

My Feedback: (22)

When I got in the hobby, there were no store bought gas engines. You literally had to send your weed eater engine to a specialists and have it blue printed and balanced to make it suitable for airplanes. Gas engines were for the hard core giant scale modellers. Heavy on the "scale". Plans built ships with complex cable systems that incoprorated mechanical fail-safe redundancy. They were amazing machines built by brilliant people.

Now we have off-the-shelf engines, linkages, servos, power systems, and even ARF airframes. Giant scale gas has become main-stream. Bigger flys nice. Bigger is easier for people to see. Bigger is more stable and forgiving for novices and experts alike. And bigger uses cheaper fuel.

Gas has become very popular at one of my clubs. It might even be more popular than glow. We have had to make changes to the field to accomodate the larger models. The hobby constantly evolves and we must constantly adapt. So is life. It keeps things fun and exciting. So is it a fad ? The entire hobby has been one fantastic evolving fad for the past 35 years. Technologies have advanced, capabilities have advanced and young people have moved the boundries of piloting to new levels that none of us could have dreamed of 30 years ago. And it isn't static now either. It will keep evolving. Maybe 4 stroke gas engines are next. Who knows. If you can dream it, they can make it. And they probably will one day.

OliverJacob

My Feedback: (12)

Saito makes a 4 stroke gas engine...and when I look at it long enough, I'll buy one

Radical Departure

My Feedback: (13)

How true!! The better ones can generally get tuned up quick enough, most of the time. For me personally its an aspect of the hobby I have no interest in, no more than I do in trying CL or pattern. To each their own interest...

SigMan

My Feedback: (21)

No.

cutaway

A couple hundred off peak probably isn't enough unless you're using a very shallow pitch prop, like a 3 or 4. I usually go for around 600 with common sport engines, some racing engines might need to be several thousand on the fat side.

Erratic behavior can come from many sources. Bad carb O-rings/gaskets, loose backplates, improperly torqued head bolts, low compression, using too much nitro (I've seen this a lot at the field in larger glow engines), too hot a plug for the fuel and atmospheric conditions can cause predetonation, too cold causes flameouts.

jessiej

Weren't ALL model engines prior to 1947 gas?

jess

lbuff1

My Feedback: (22)

lol

JeffinTD

I've tried running it richer. The mixture just doesn't stay put. I'm wondering about an air leak at the crankshaft.

JeffinTD

How's this for a four stroke gas?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PnJk...e_gdata_player

Though I like the sound of glow, the engine in that video is a whole different level.