Hey everyone.

I ordered another PC-9 kit today. The last PC-9 I had, I had all kinds of trouble with the engine being inverted. I cant count the number of times I had almost wetted myself because it would always dead stick. I think there was a cooling problem also.

I'm probably going to do what the salesman suggested at the hobby store and mount it sidewise. Seems the most logical to get fuel to the carb properly and with the head of the engine sticking out of the cowl, should help with the cooling problems.

He gave me good advice in saying that I'll probably need to balance the aircraft out because on landings, the plane will tilt to the right a bit. He suggested running a string from the prop shaft to the back of the plane and holding it up and seeing how much weight I would need on the left wing to keep it balanced.

Is there anything else I should know when mounting the engine sideways?? I want to make sure I have all of my bases covered before building/flying the plane.

Sounds like you recieved some good advise. The lateral balance is important when you get close to stall speed.

i love the sidewinder mounting of engines. only thing is that it doesn't look scale if you have a narrow cowl (non radial warbirds). i use sidewinder for all sport applications and don't really bother with the lateral balance. for some scale and pattern apps i go inverted.

thumbs up on sidewinder!

only thing to look out for is the airflow through the cowl if you're running a fourstroke. you'll have to make sure that you still maintain a 1 to 2 inlet to outlet ratio so that the air to the carb is smooth.

I'm using a 2 stroke .46, so thats no biggy.. The PC-9 tends to have a pretty narrow cowling, so a decent amout of the head is going to be poking out so it wont be really "scale". But then again, it cant look too scale after being planted in the ground due to dead sticks.

The thing about mounting any 2/4stroke engine inverted is to lower the tank. If you can't or won't, your going to have problems.

When it was mounted inverted, I did lower the tank but still had problems. The problems weren't as bad but it still would deadstick once in a while. For me, I'd rather sacrifice some looks for reliability.

The biggest problem was cooling. That cowl just didnt offer enough air to cool the engine. It would rev up and down until it finally died. I'm hoping with the head sticking out, it would get enough air to keep it cool. Atleast it would look more scale with the cowl and the head hanging out of the side rather than than no cowl at all.

To me, pilots that are worried about "scale looks" only see the differences when the plane is sitting in front of them on the ground where you can squint and look for small details. If you are interested in actually flying the plane then why should you care bbecause once the plane is farther than 20 feet away from you, you can't see the engine sticking out anyway. Sideways mounted engines usually don't give you any more problems than vertical mounting which means fairly reliable runs for flying. Its definitely less nerve racking to fly with an engine that runs well and thats what you want. [8D]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'll definantly go with a side mounted engine. Id rather be up flying than fiddle farting around with the engine all of the time trying to get it to run right.

This may be a dumb, trival question BUT when I do side mounting, I simply flip the engine mounts 90 degress and make sure the prop is still in the same place as it would be if the engine is inverted, correct??

Yea rotate 90 deg, exhaust down and keep the crankshaft on the centerline. So far all of mine are side mounted since my trainer. They run better and are easy to start. Remember for sport flying scale details should look good at pattern altitude only. Ha Ha.

Ninety degrees is usually OK. I like to base the amount of rotation on carb nozzle height to tank centerline. Also sometimes 90 degrees will create muffler interference with the fuselage so it is a good idea to check.

Bill

Re: "Also sometimes 90 degrees will create muffler interference with the fuselage so it is a good idea to check."< Ya, depending on which fuselage, sometimes the side mounting means that the muffler is too tight up against the plane. I had this on a H9 Cherokee. Solved it by adding one of those muffler extensions. Some planes are designed with that in mind and have a groove in the fuselage to allow clearance for the muffler. On my Stuka, I had tio make my own groove and cover the gap with fiberglass. [8D]