Follow Rusty's Memorial Traveling Engines!

Fantastic! Well done!

Thanks everyone. . My kids were pretty excited about it, you can see the spark in my youngest eye in the photo pretty good too.  

Here's a run video of the engines in action, stick around to the end about 3 mins where we cranked up the RR1 and PeeWee at the same time.



I think all the solid tune ups done before me really made it easy to run them. Thanks really helped with the time I had for this.  Seen your note in the log Getback, great stuff.

Hi layback209,
What a wonderful tribute to Rusty.
I think he is still smiling.
Middle of winter, Manitoba, Canada, is not easy at all...
Should be noted in your y-tube...
Thanks for your great posting here,
With Respect,
Dave

layback209 on Feb 12, 2023 wrote:Also ran the 0.020 and rr1 in harmony, now that was quite the experience. Video soon. When they both cranked up, folks stepped back, powerful sound and epic oil spray action. Plan is to copy photos and videos onto the USB, fill out the log book and ship them out mid next week

I particularly enjoy the photo with @layback209 and his sons, very precious, know they are meant to be someone important when they grow up. The modeling hobby is meant to be shared with such. They are our future.

Since the next party in line is not quite ready to receive the engines yet, Jacob has given the go ahead for me to fill the gap. Layback (Derek) is in the process of mailing the engines to me.

Will notify when engines are received with forthcoming photos, engine tests and if weather permits, possibly a flight or two, before sending ahead. - George

HalfaDave wrote:
Middle of winter, Manitoba, Canada, is not easy at all...

@HalfaDave
Well, you don't have to tell me that twice......

NEW222 wrote:

HalfaDave wrote:Middle of winter, Manitoba, Canada, is not easy at all...

@HalfaDave Well, you don't have to tell me that twice......

Am very familiar with Winnipeg, capital of Manitoba, having visited there back in the 1980's several times, been as far as Portage La Prairie, west of Winnipeg where one of my wife's friends was from. Now hear that the population in Portage is the same size as Portales (13k), 20 miles south of us and home to Eastern New Mexico University.

Our new Salvation Army Officers (pastors) are from Canada also and have lived in Winnipeg.

Got a little story. Back in December 2013, went to bell ring with my saxophone at the Salvation Army kettle outside in front of Hobby Lobby here in Clovis. It was 22ºF (-6ºC) at 9:00 AM in the morning. (We usually don't get that cold of weather until January or February.) My first thought was that Jim, one of our previous officers would cancel bell ringing. Then it dawned on me, "no, he's Canadian." When he arrived, I told him that. He laughed, told me his favorite sport is hockey.

getback wrote:That's Great George that your getting on board with the Rusty's Traveling Engines !! look forward to the adventures in your neck of the woods .

Eric, regarding my neck of the woods, except in town, we don't have much woods.

Fall 2014 near Santa Rosa, NM with friends, I am at the far right next to my 2001 Kawasaki ZG1200 Voyager XII.

Winter 2014 at Russell's Truck Stop in Endie, NM with friends, I am at the far right.

To all, Derek @layback209 shipped Rusty's memorial engines to me. They departed Calgary, Canada 11 days ago, made its trek to Vancouver, then cleared customs in Los Angeles, CA; after to Texas: Dallas - Fort Worth, Abilene, Lubbock, arriving in Clovis, NM yesterday afternoon. I was out when it arrived with my wife intercepting it.

I'd just got home at supper time and saw the packages, but had community band rehearsal in the evening, so I got a chance today to open it. Here's the box as received:

Note, for those concerned with privacy, the photo resolution is sufficiently low enough to protect that.

These are the contents found inside:


More to follow.

Looks familiar. Nice to know that it's in good hands.

The Thunderbolt r/c longs are now worth a king's ransom.

Woohoo! That's not to bad for shipping speed, glad it made it over seamlessly.

I am curious what your instrument is? I used to play lead trombone in a Jazz band and in classical band in grade school.

Look forward to following along

layback209 wrote:I am curious what your instrument is? I used to play lead trombone in a Jazz band and in classical band in grade school.

Saxophone. My early 1950's French made Selmer Beaugnier Vito bari sax, was an Internet auction buy at $315 US shipping included, an old battered school instrument, retired from circulation. It was musty when received. Did a clean up, removed dents, resoldered broken solder joints, straightened the key rack, adjust pad heights, added missing key bumpers, etc. Now it plays beautifully in tune. It was hand made. Selmer discontinued these in 1970 because they could not compete with machine made instruments.


My Vito bari before clean-up, red shows it has high copper content.

My Vito bari after clean-up, brass looks normal without corrosion.

Hi All,
I did some math and observations.
Hope you do not mind.
Somehow,
Rusty's engines got from Manitoba to New Mexico.
In the most roundabout way.
Through very wicked weather, few have ever seen.
I bet,
Rusty has a smile on his face...
Take care,
Have fun,
Dave

You probably been wondering what I have been up to, as now 2 weeks have passed since I received Rusty's engines. Haven't forgotten. Next in line isn't quite ready to receive them. (Well, some discussion he can, through receipt by others, but would be out of pocket for a few weeks.) Last week had a last minute tasker, daughter sold her house and so we were in Phoenix for a couple days to help her move, now temporarily staying with us.

I don't know how Bob is able to keep busy like the EverReady energizer bunny. I just turned 69 a couple days ago, and he is 16 years my senior. Was down a couple days resting. (11 hours driving one way for 2 days total there and return tuckered me out. )

Just letting you know, we are still within the intent of the rules originally set up by Jacob. To keep things moving, he asked that we take no more than 2 weeks, but there can be exceptions due to weather, etc.

Here's what the engines look like out of their case.


Above all, we must give @Jason_WI a hearty thank you, because he went through the trouble to make available these 3 special engines, the venerable Fox .35 3-bolt Stunt, the special Cox .020 Pee Wee variant with a custom 3D printed scaled down horseshoe back and the hot Cox .049 RR-1 with specially machined ribbed crankcase, 8 CC stunt tank and rear rotary valve fitted where the reed valve usually sits on the front of the tank.

Crankcase is pinned to rotate this rear rotary valve. Sceptre Flight engine article archive has it outputting 0.092 BHP at 18,000 RPM on Cox Racing Fuel (30% nitro?). The .049 Tee Dee puts out .14 BHP at 22,000 RPM, considerably more powerful. I found it interesting that the Black Widow achieved 0.085 BHP at 16,000 RPM on standard Cox Fuel (15%?). So, short of further improvements, it is understandable why with the law of diminishing returns, (the more you attempt to improve it, the less you get back), hotter reed valve engines won out. The extra machining effort to create the RR-1 wasn't worth the cost.

The following are the opening words by Jacob introducing the purpose of this particular traveling engine set:

Admin on Oct. 9, 2020 wrote:To honor and remember our friend and fellow modeler, Rusty Knowlton (RknRusty), Jason Birnschein (Jason_WI) has created a set of engines to pass around to all of those who wish to show their respect. The set includes a special Cox .020 engine with a custom 3D printed backplate, a Cox RR-1 .049 engine, and a 15th anniversary gold plated Fox .35 engine. This set works in the same way as the first two Traveling Engines, the engines and all the accessories inside a case will be shipped from member to member.

@Jason_WI did a fantastic job on providing these engines.

The Fox .35 Stunt (3 bolt backplate) has noticeable patina from being run. As @Ken Cook would say, the head has the right color for a Fox. It has been highly polished, has a chrome like appearance to it. The custom made horseshoe back Pee is a sight to behold. You need to handle this downsized horseshoe back to really appreciate the work it took into creating it. On the side of it has in block letters, "RUSTY" embossed on it. The rarer RR-1 has some of the blue anodizing rubbed off it where in the past it had been installed and removed a couple times. Left upper side the crankcase by the cylinder mount area has an abraded portion, where it appears it may have suffered a crash of some sort. Otherwise, it looks clean and has excellent compression.

Today, we had colder temperatures with 40 MPH (65 kmh) winds. I've run engines before inside the garage with vehicles removed, but as windy as it is and additional stuff in the garage, not a good idea. I have roughly a week before engines are shipped off to the next recipient.

I bought a new glow plug igniter, but am a little disappointed in the quality. My old one had a positive locking feature, by pushing over plug then twist about 1/8th of a turn. This one isn't formed as good, does not make good contact unless I hold it with one hand, does not do hands off well. I'm beginning to think about locating my old one, removing the battery on this one and getting my old one work work again. Also, the charger is strange. Normally, the LED is used to indicate you have made good a good connection, so battery can charge. This one just indicates the charger is plugged in, kind of useless.

I looked at the others offered, seems to be the same cheap junk in photos. However, I did get my rejuvenated K&B .35 Stallion that I resurrected from the dead (the one that suffered water damage that I painted the head green like the Torpedoes). It ran on prime just fine, just as Ken points out, seems to love to scream.

More to come ...

The 15th anniversary is a bit of a rarity. It actually is plated in gold but it usually fades real bad. Fox didn't do the plating themselves. Many of these oxidized and the plating begins peeling off. The Fox .40 Rat engine was also of the same plating. I've always come to agree that this version of this engine is one of the finer ones as I've always seen them run quite successfully. I personally own one myself but the previous owner used it for free flight and drilled a hole in the case for a venturi flood off and cut the stack down slightly. The hole I can deal with it's the butchering of the case that bothers me. I would also like to give Jason a big thumbs up for taking the effort to provide all of it in a wonderfully arranged case and information.