Atwood - Wasp

GWILLIEFOX wrote:The November 1950 Air trails had the first review of the WASP.  It ran 11,600 on a wooden "wide Blade" 6x3 and 15,000 on a wooden 5x3.  They also said the engine would run 1,000 rpm faster on fuels designed for "miniature" engines.  True this may be anemic compared to modern 049s, but in the day it was spectacular.  It was the king of the hill until the Space Bug came out and then the Thermal Hopper beat them both out

Manufacturers were still fooling around with fuels to see what these little guys needed, but you can be sure modelers were pumping up the nitro.  K&B Supersonic 1000, a popular racing fuel was 50% methanol, 25% nitro, and 25% Castor oil.

Bob Holland was Bill Atwood's partner on the Wasp.  They got into a big argument when Bob found Bill was designing an engine for Wen Mac.  About 1953 they split up, Bob kept the WASP and the name, Bill Atwood went on to market his own designs, about identical to the original WASP.  Bob put a little "H" under the wasp name on the right of the crankcase to identify it as a Holland WASP.

We had Bob Holland as a speaker at one of the MECA EXPOs.  He said guys had been throwing blades on the 6x3 Kaysuns being supplied.  He had Top Flite make a special 6" prop for the engine and shipped them with the engine.  I had to search for years to get this prop!