RC Hobby Cars Are a Fun Hobby | Hobbies
I just discovered an excellent article posted earlier today, by Philip Harman, and entitled RC Hobby Cars Are a Fun Hobby | Hobbies that I would suggest all of you read! I’ve included some little extracts in the hope of whetting your appetites!
Nitro engines were introduced. Companies that made rc hobby cars started making more accessories for the cars. The owners started tricking out their cars. They would take off the standard pieces and add in better tires, stronger engines, whatever they could.
Now, reading this started me off thinking so I searched for some more articles on the subject and found some more greats! i.e. this post by Model Airplane News, posted four days ago, over on Model Airplane News:
To keep the engines running reliably, you must supply them with clean fuel. I see it all the time at the flying field: an engine quits because the filter screens inside the carb are clogged and fuel flow suffers. I always use two filters in my fuel container, a felt clunk filter and an inline paper filter. Clunk filters backed up with in-line filters between the engines and the model’s fuel tanks are standard equipment on all my models. Clean, well-filtered fuel is also very important for glow-engine aircraft. I use industrial-grade filters that you can buy at most small-engine and lawnmower shops.
Finally, another fine article on the subject came from Tech-Seeker on Tech-Seeker Blog posted back in March and entitled Uncover the 2-Stroke Model Airplane Engine which is also definitely worth a look!
While these two types of model airplane engine produce the same result, and use the same fuel, they accomplish this goal in very different ways and have different characteristics. For the moment we’re just going to consider the 2-stroke engine. RC model airplane engines working on a two stroke principle means that there is fuel ignition on every second stroke of the piston in the cylinder. When the piston is on its down stroke down the cylinder, fuel and air will enter the combustion chamber between the top of the piston and the cylinder head. When the piston reaches the bottom of its stroke and starts to rise again it then compresses the fuel/air mixture in the rapidly shrinking volume of the combustion chamber. The fuel/air mixture is ignited by the glow plug just as the piston reaches the end of it’s upstroke. The glow plug is so called because it contains a platinum wire that continues to glow from the heat of the last fuel ignition. The new explosion forces the piston back into the next down stroke.
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Both the exhaust port and the transfer port are opened as the piston descends in the cylinder bore while the fuel/air inlet is closed. The downward movement of the piston now compresses the fuel/air mixture drawn into the crankcase on the previous upstroke which now rushes up the transfer port into the combustion chamber and helps force out the exhaust gases from that space – and the cycle begins again. As the speed of this cycle increases, the power output of your RC model airplane engine is increased. Due to it’s simplicity the 2-stroke engine can operate to high RPM and high power outputs. Unfortunately, this also means high noise levels. The 2-stroke engine in all it’s forms is a very elegant engineering solution. The piston takes the place of 3 mechanical valves, a timing mechanism and a fuel pump – thereby keeping the weight down and reliability up.
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Where outright power and speed are the primary requirement it has little competition and the simplicity and high volume production has led to highly reliable and cost effective engines being developed. Noise is really the only negative consideration. So for your next project balance the cost, maintenance, exhaust noise level, and weight in order to choose the right sort of model airplane engine for your project. Bruce Bird makes it easy for the beginner to quickly get a grasp of the broad range of exciting activities that make up airplane modeling. To receive his FREE 5 part mini-series and learn more about model airplane engines visit his website at www.