Little Traveler revisited

Lol, that was really cool !

The thanks go you you Kim. What a worthy thing to do.

I saw a bio on Burt Rutan not long ago and it showed him in the back seat of his Moms convertible flying his RC model when he was a kid.
Made me think of Kims adventure.

Yeah, this has been going on a long time, and I immediately had the thought of doing it back when I was a kid, and managed to pull off some successful flights with my first Minnie Mambo and it's escapement radio.

Then, THIS fellow came along in 1976, and REALLY ratcheted up the Adventure Quotient! If you go to the third page of Mr. Rich's autobiography, he outlines his coast-to-coast cross-country flight with a Goldberg Falcon named "Liberty Bell" :

https://www.modelaircraft.org/files/RichRobertWBob.pdf

that was cool!

For long distance flights like this, would a texaco style setup give the most range? Maybe using a killer bee backplate, and extra large tank?

Would be interesting to compare fuel efficiency on low nitro vs high nitro in different 049's. As well as compare prop sizes, and fuel per mile of flying.

I'd originally planned to use a Dragon Fly .049 and just make fueling stops along the way (red dots on map), until a bud of mind told me to quit being a sissy and "Load'r to Go!!!"...or some such Redneck jabber...meaning to try a non-stop trip.

So, I gouged out the Minnie's forward bulkhead, wedged (literally) a four ounce tank in on it's side, and stuck one of Bernie's Red Serpent engines on the nose. I was told that there was no way the .049 could draw fuel out of such a large tank, but referencing past experiences, I reasoned that if a disconnected fuel line could siphon a whole tank of fuel onto the ground, it OUGHT to do OK siphoning it to the engine...which happily turned out to be true ! No pressure, other than a forward-facing vent tube, was used.

More nitro => more fuel used. Nitro brings some of its own oxygen to the party so you can stuff more into the cylinder.

Larger diameter prop=> slower RPM, longer run time on a given tank of fuel

Texaco engines restrict the intake slightly to improve the duration on a given amount of fuel, so a killer bee back plate would be the opposite, not necessarily a bad thing though.

There should be a sweet spot where an engine with a Sure Start choke tube throttle will give a high power duration run. You can choose which back plate you want.

A 7 inch prop in a 3 or 4 pitch should perform quite well with no other modifications. It may even provide more static thrust than a 5 or 6 inch prop with the same pitch (but don't count on it).

Phil