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From the Editor - February 2021
On the brighter side. the previously-mentioned medical scare which upset my equilibrium around the New Year turned out to be far less of an issue than I had feared. In fact, it proved to be a very manageable condition from which I'm well on the way to a complete recovery. So that's one worry out of the way, at least for now! As a result of the distraction caused by recent and ongoing events, I’ve been drawn away from work in the engine field. Hopefully things will settle down in time. Of course, the pandemic continues to cast a long shadow, affecting all aspects of our lives. All we can do is try to ride it out. Another sign of the times in which we live is the recent announcement that the EU is banning all sales of nitromethane in their area. This is supposedly to restrict its use in the making of explosives and the like. Even pre-mixed model engine fuels are affected - the EU is placing an upper limit of 16% nitro in blends such as model engine fuels. Once again, the honest folks pay the price for the illicit activities of those who refuse to participate responsibly in society. Wonder what the drag racers will do ................... In the meantime, I have somehow managed to get a new edition out - I hope that you enjoy it. I’m happy to report that the problems which stopped the statistics monitoring for this site have been resolved by my service provider. The issues were with their network, not with my specific site. The now-updated site usage stats show that many of my readers have continued to take an interest despite other distractions, evidently using this website to help them fill the hours of isolation forced upon many of us by the COVID situation as well as a desire to take a break from political realities.
In January 2021, things remained much the same. The site had 504,328 hits, thus pretty much maintaining the established pace. The number of unique visitors was also more or less unchanged at 2,525 - my regular readership seems to have stabilized very nicely at around 2,500. These visitors made a total of 4,795 visits, again pretty much back to normal, as was the number of pages accessed at 20,683. I'm happy enough with these figures.which confirm that despite the COVID-19 pandemic and the current political distractions, a good number of folks are clearly remaining very much engaged with our hobby. Further confirmation comes from the fact that the mail box has remained quite active. I heard from a fair number of you during January, including (in no particular order) Luis Petersen, Dave Jones, Brian Bushley, David Farmer, Peter Valicek, Michael Diamond, Kelley Crozier, Bill Wells, Maris Dislers, Don Imre, Paul Goodenough, Terry Chapman, Peter Gain, Andrew Boddington, Ingemar Larsson, Lars Gustafsson, Sergio Montes, Neill McRae, Peter Scott, Chris Ottewell and Chris Coote. Apologies to anyone whom I may have inadvertently missed in the crowd, and apologies also to those whose messages went unanswered. The blog site has continued to justify its existence by contributing a small but steady flow of relevant traffic - thanks for that.
I had a long-running correspondence with Jan and his son Bjørn going back to the period in 2014 during which I was writing up the David-Andersen story for this website. Bjørn tells me that he used to read every new edition of this website (in Norwegian, naturally!) to his father, who always enjoyed it very much. Jan was kind enough to present me with an autographed copy of his classic book on model engine construction. I’ll continue to treasure that book as well as my happy memories of our long-range friendship. I’ll also continue to greatly value the examples of Jan’s engines which I’ve been fortunate enough to acquire over the years. Like many others, I feel his loss very deeply. Turning now to a completely different topic, during the recent period when I’ve had trouble motivating myself to undertake further original research and writing, I’ve been passing some time going back to review a number of my old articles dating back to the time prior to my establishment of this website in April 2014. Prior to that date, all of my published on-line work appeared on the wonderful “Model Engine News” (MEN) website run by my late and much missed mate Ron Chernich. As I went over my work of over a decade ago, it became increasingly apparent that many of my articles on MEN had become seriously outdated and in some cases quite For that reason, you’re going to see an increasing number of topics on this site which have been the subject of earlier articles still to be found on MEN. If I could update those articles on MEN, I would do so - the ongoing viability of Ron's invaluable creation is important to me. But since this isn’t possible, I have no choice other than to present the updated articles here. I hope you understand. Last month’s articles on the “K” Vulture and “K” 2 cc models were cases in point. Another glaring example is the Cobra .049 glow-plug Getting back now to the normal business of this website, I have another Wotizit with which to challenge you! This one’s a nice-looking sideport diesel of undetermined displacement submitted by my valued Swedish friend Lars Gusfafsson, who received these images from an acquaintance with a request for help in identifying it. The style of its construction with the use of seemingly high-quality die-castings strongly suggests that it's a production model of some kind, but its identification is beyond me. Can any reader do better?!? Turning now to this month’s lead article, I was expecting to get back to my regular one-article-per-month pace, but an unsolicited contribution from my good Aussie mate Maris Dislers has put me once again into two-article mode! As regular readers will be aware, Maris has taken a strong interest in the OK Cub engines from For his contribution this time around, Maris has undertaken a much-appreciated review and test of the OK Cub .060 cuin. reed valve model with which OK hoped to make its mark in the very competitive Ready-to-Fly (RTF) market of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s through its involvement with the Comet RTF range. The reed valve .049 models are also scrutinized. Maris has included some insightful comments presented earlier by the late Bill Mohrbacher on the Cox Model Engine Forum. Bill may be gone, but his immense contributions to our shared hobby are by no means forgotten. My sincere thanks go out to Maris for his invaluable efforts! For my own contribution this month, I’ve prepared something a little different - a study of an engine type as opposed to a specific model or series. I thought that it might be of some interest to create a summary of the various attempts to create really small diesels (aka I’m very well aware that numerous micro-diesels meeting my displacement criterion have appeared since 1960. However, I had to keep the article down to a reasonable length, hence my chronological cut-off at 1960. This one’s for the pioneers! If time and energy permit, I may continue the story in a future article - we’ll see. Looking now towards next month, I’ve recently fielded several inquiries regarding the Fuji .049 series from Japan. This reminded me that although I began to write up an in-depth review of that series prior to Ron Chernich’s early 2014 demise, with the intention of presenting it on MEN, I never got around to finalizing it. I’ve covered the Fuji .099 series as well as the .29/.35 models in earlier articles, so it seems to be a logical progression to add the .049’s to the list of models covered.
While I was at it, I also ran across an unpublished draft article about the highly distinctive Fuji .15 twin-stack models. I’ve always had a soft spot for those very individualistic units! Reviewing that draft, I quickly concluded that it richly merited publication to complete my coverage of the classic Fuji range. Look for it to appear in a future edition of this website…….. I think that about does it for this edition. All being well, I'll be back to you with another edition on or about March 1st, 2021. Meanwhile, please accept my best wishes for continuing to rise above the present pandemic and political situations and getting the best of what life has to offer under present circumstances. The heady aroma of diesel fumes, sparkie smoke or burning nitro may be more challenging than usual to experience, but I hope that at least some of you find an opportunity to get your fume fixes! Take care and stay well - pay attention to the doctors and scientists rather than certain politicians and their uninformed self-interested supporters!! Cheers, Adrian Duncan British Columbia, Canada ___________________________________ Note regarding material to be found on this site - unless specifically otherwise noted, all images and text which appear on this site are my own work, and I hereby assert my right to be recognized as the originator of this material. For the record, this material is made freely available to all upon two firm conditions:
Adrian C. Duncan British Columbia, Canada
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Well, what a month January 2021 turned out to be! Definitely one to remember and learn from as well as being one for the history books. The recent flirtation with anarchy down south (which is not over) was way too close to home to suit me! Let’s not do that again any time soon!
As usual in December of any year, the now-available numbers for December 2020 showed a modest increase in activity on this site during that month. The December total of total of 514,832 hits was little changed, but the number of visits was substantially increased at 5,879. These visits came from a virtually unchanged 2,467 unique visitors, implying an increase in the number of those making multiple visits. However, these visitors accessed a total of only 21,656 pages, a significant reduction from the November total but still far better than October’s figure of only 14,954 pages. November was evidently an exceptional month! 
I’m very much afraid that my next topic is something that we’ll just have to get used to, life following the course that it does. I have to report yet another departure from our midst, and this one really hurts - we’ve lost Norway’s most prominent model engine manufacturer Jan David-Andersen, who passed away peacefully on Saturday January 23
Accordingly, I’ve exhumed the original text of the Fuji .049 article and updated it to the best of my ability for presentation next month. I think you’ll find that this is a far more interesting story than you might expect!| |