Star of VSC 2004

Charlie Bruce's Star had motor sag even with "dual mags". Hit a little hard on the nosewheel with resultant downthrust in his long shaft Fox59 ignition motor. Gives me another chance to try my hand at posting a pic. Best to all,

I WANT ONE

Plans source is listed on the other Star thread.

Cy

The motor is an Atwood Champion .63 with a two speed timer on it rather than a Fox.

Jake

Hmmm... that's strange-Charlie told me it was a LongShaft Fox59. It looked like one when I launched it for him-needle in the back and all-but with all the noise the (ignition) motors were making, I must have heard wrong. Plus he brought two Stars- maybe one of them had a different motor. Will have to check with Charlie again, perhaps at next year's VSC.

LAST EDITED ON Mar-28-04 AT 08:32 PM (CDT)
 
Unless he changed it prior to this VSC, the #1 "Star" had the Atwood in it that I gave him. What he put in the other one, I have no idea.
The Atwood Champ also has a rear intake and NVA.

Jake

The Star in the picture had a second switch near the tail that Charlie had me turn on after the engine was running on it's own. I thought he had added another ignition system- you're saying it came already installed on an Atwood. I'm learning on a Forster29 and an Anderson Spitfire- these ignition motors are similar to my old '46 SeaBee 5hp outboard motor. Got a lot to learn. Best regards,

>The Star in the picture had a second switch near the tail
>that Charlie had me turn on after the engine was running on
>it's own. I thought he had added another ignition system-
>you're saying it came already installed on an Atwood. I'm
>learning on a Forster29 and an Anderson Spitfire- these
>ignition motors are similar to my old '46 SeaBee 5hp
>outboard motor. Got a lot to learn. Best regards,

No. The motor originally had a two-speed timer for a high and low throttle rig on it. CB may well have some type boost system on it now- I don't know. It had two sets of points- if you rotated the timer assembly, you got high speed on one set and low speed on the other. It would take some kind of servo set up or third-line to do this though and I doubt he uses it. The motor had a high compression head on it too as I recall.

Jake

Here's a close-up of whatever it was. I know he had a long shaft 59 in the Foxy.

Well Elwyn, that spark plug is certainly not mounted on it's side like the big Fox! You are getting way too cool at your photography. As the Moons put it-"Awesome!" Best regards to all y'all Gluedobbers,

That's the Atwood!

Jake

Marvin Denny had a db meter and was checking the "health" of the various spark motors as they were being fired up in the pits. The Orwicks were way up there over a hundred db at 10ft, waist high, etc. The Star's motor may have been just a hair louder. Of course, on the db scale, a "hair" is a lot! Back to that Atwood, did it have a two position spark advance? I'm not sure of what the "two speed timer" entails. Thanks,

It had two sets of points. One was for high speed and one for low. You could "throttle back" or up to full speed by moving the timer housing. Cal Smith won the first ever Navy Carrier event at the NATs in the early 1950s using an (I THINK) Anderson Spitfire .65 with two speed spark ignition set up like this in a Skyraider.

Jake

LAST EDITED ON Mar-29-04 AT 01:43 AM (CDT)
 
Ah.. At first I thought the "motor sag" referred to the downthrust you could see in the picture and I was wondering if the magnetos were THAT heavy.. Then I read it again ..

A two speed timer does indeed have two sets of points. One set for an advanced timing which gives a high rpm run and one set at a retarded timing for low speed running. The method for switching between the two is to use a relay in the model which switches the primary winding wire from the coil to the desired set of points, normally done with a battery and a switch on the handle and using the lines which are connected to the relay. This method obviously can only be used with a spark ignition setup, thus not seen very often since the glow plug hit the scene in 1947. Note, the timer housing can be advanced or retarded on the ground to tune the engine for desired run characteristics but is not moved in flight, thus you can only get two discrete engine speeds.