Control Line Combat
Rich Lopez [[email protected]]
Today's state-of-the-art Combat engines are prized.
The evolution of Combat engines
The evolution of model-airplane engines for Combat is fascinating to observe. It is happening currently, building on developments from past decades.
When I began building model airplanes in the early 1960s, the multitude of hobby shops in San Francisco had display cases containing shiny new engines from a variety of manufacturers. Even discount stores or those that required a membership had a hobby section—the equivalent of Kmart, Target, or Wal-Mart carrying hobby items.
The other source of modeling supplies was regular department stores such as The Emporium, The White House, or Macy’s. Sometimes they had knowledgeable people behind the counter, but it was usually a part-time clerk.
As preteens, my neighbor Steve Lilves and I would ride our bicycles all over the city visiting hobby stores to window-shop. Then we would save our pennies, nickels, dimes, two-bit and four-bit coins until we had enough to purchase something.
Early purchases and dreams
I often had to change what I wanted to buy because it cost more than I had. My first big engine was a McCoy .19 that sold for $4.95 plus 2% tax. The McCoy .35 I really wanted cost a buck more.
It didn’t cost a cent to look at that beautiful Johnson Combat Special sitting in a light yellow box with a clear cover and a little price-tag sticker of $19.95. It was hard to save that much money; putting aside my weekly two bits for a carton of milk and a graham cracker at school didn’t put much of a dent in my goal of buying that Johnson.
Although I couldn’t talk about engine performance from personal experience at first, I learned what other people said about particular engines from countless hours spent in hobby shops and at the various flying fields in San Francisco.
I felt a sense of sadness when an engine I had been coveting was gone, purchased by some fortunate modeler. My spirits would lift when the replacement Johnson arrived and filled the showcase again.
Popular engines and shifting loyalties
Sometimes there would be a couple of different versions of Fox engines sitting next to the Johnson. The only Fox that really interested me was the Combat Special. K&B had an interesting .35 that was suitable for Combat, though I wasn’t too keen on the green paint on the head. There were two versions of VECO .35s to choose from: the Stunt and the Combat.
All those American products were my first choice. The alternative to the U.S.-made items came from Japan. O.S. Max had a couple of engines that looked well made, but in those days “made in Japan” meant, “not so bueno.”
I still remember when the first Italian-made SuperTigre engines were placed in that showcase next to the established brands. By that time I had regularly begun to attend model-airplane contests and had a go at balloon busting. I did, however, always manage to wander off to the Combat area to watch and learn. The experts soon started switching their Johnsons for SuperTigres.
Alex Sinkevitch could make his paper-covered Sneekers dance all over the sky. Neal Carpenter of Rodeo, California, built immaculate VooDoos and covered them in various silk colors. I learned a lot from him and his wife, Mary, who flew Combat with equally beautiful models. Neal used SuperTigre G-21 engines.
The engine wars
The engine wars took their toll on a number of manufacturers, whose products were prone to failure and lacked the speed and reliability of newer power plants. O.S. Max tried to advance from its IIs and IIIs to an H version that was deemed suitable for Combat, yet I never saw one in competition.
K&Bs were seldom seen in the ring or on the on-deck circle. Fox went through all sorts of design changes: straight-in glow plugs, slant-in glow-plug versions, fins on the head, no fins on the head, head clamp and button insert, metal band around the piston, big crankshaft, four-bolt backplate, six-bolt backplate, and others too numerous to mention. All this was done in the quest for the speed and power demanded by those crazy, wild-eyed Combat pilots.
The top layer of Combat pilots ran “hopped-up” or “souped-up” versions of what they could purchase in the hobby shops. At one time, the Johnson factory offered to take your engine in and give it the company’s official special treatment to make it even better—all for the price of $7.50.
Norm McFadden and Richard Brasher of the Redwood City, California, Condor Legion club had SuperTigres running well beyond their red lines, and they often paid the price when the crankshafts went sailing away. Crankshaft problems continued to plague their efforts when they switched to Fox Mark IIIs and IVs. The solution came in the form of scratch-built and -designed aftermarket crankshafts, often referred to as "Brasher cranks."
The Fox factory made bigger and stronger crankshafts and added new and better piston-and-liner sets. Some of us bought aftermarket components from Andy Kerr, Bill Wisniewski, and Roger Venturi, or we sent stock parts to Dick Tyndall or Hulan Mathies for modification.
Aftermarket solutions and the Nelson era
Henry Nelson entered the Combat engine wars with everything we were searching for in one package. His .36 Combat engine was, and still is, fast and reliable, and it starts every time. The engine wars effectively ended at that point, even though the Ukrainian FORA factory wanted a piece of the market with its Black Power engine.
The market for AMA Combat engines dried up after everyone acquired Nelsons. You needed to buy a new power plant only if you destroyed one in a crash or lost one in the cornfields.
F2D international competition and modern engines
In the international F2D event, which is ever increasing in popularity, engines are evolving on a less-than-yearly basis. FORA, Profi, Zalp, AKM, Cyclon, Buran, Zorro, and many others of limited production are searching for an extra one-tenth of a second advantage over eight-lap timing.
Aleksandr Kalmykov of Russia is the brains behind the Cyclon engines. His strategy is to completely redesign the engines from one season to the next. The change is often so radical that bolt patterns, engine widths, and the type of engine mounts required are so different that there is zero interchangeability.
Aleksandr is immensely creative, and his engines are works of art. He is currently offering a product with bolt-on front ends, with either an inboard- or outboard-facing venturi. According to him, those engines will fit into the same mounts and have the same spacing as the Ukrainian-built FORA and Zalp engines.
I am currently testing and running the fourth-generation Zalp, which seems to have a different philosophy about engine evolution. The case's external dimensions and appearance are almost identical to the generation 1 engine. I started running these after the 2006 World Championships in Spain and have since run the second- and third-generation models.
Each generation has had minor internal changes—to liners, rods, crankshafts, backplates, or spray bars—and each runs faster. It is evident that the strategy is refinement rather than redesign.
The FORA brand is widely accepted and has undergone substantial changes that include entirely different case configurations. Rumor has it that the next FORA will sport an inboard venturi. Bill Maywald has been running recent versions with outstanding results.
You won't find any of these Russian or Ukrainian engines at Kmart, Target, or Costco. You will need to spend a bit of time on the Internet to track down their distributors. Start your search at the Control Line Model Flying Web site.
Sources
- Control Line Model Flying — www.go-cl.se/cl.html
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
