I was unpacking another box of modeling stuff and one thing that came to the top is a new Brodak 1/2A engine mount.  I love these things and use them for a majority of my 1/2A profile planes.  They work great, but they’re limited to Cox tanked Bee type engines or the horseshoe engines.  And, although I haven’t tried it, it should work for the Testors 8000 engines.  I have probably 15 or so planes with these engine mounts.

Another thing I’m finding as I’m unpacking and looking for space to put everything is that I have entirely too many Cox engines.  At least 10 to 20 times as many as I’ll ever use.  Since one of things my wife and I are trying to do in our new house is to cut things back to the minimum to prevent clutter, I’m going to cut back on my engines.  And since I’m in love with bladder pressure, I’ll be cutting back severely on my tanked engines.  I think I want to end up with a majority of rotary valve engies vs. reed valve engines.  Not that I don’t love my Bees and postage stamps, but I don’t need more than five or six tanked and a couple of plastic backplate engines.

The thing now is, what do I do with all the planes I built for the Brodak mounts?  Okay, time to put off unpacking and go to the parts box I already unpacked.  I have a couple of the Texas Timers .049 TD/Medallion radial mounts in the bladder drawer waiting to be used.  Hmm…  Okay let’s take the new Brodak mount and see how the TD/Medallion radial mount fits.






Awesome!  Let’s see how it looks with a TD .051 with Kirn Kraft needle valve.






Awesome²!  I can get a couple more of the radial mounts and have two TDs and two Medallions that I can swap out between the different planes.

Texas Timers no longer sells these radial mounts for the beam mount engines.  But, these are now being  made by Kamtechnik.  Kamtechnik also makes the radial mounts for the TD .09 and .15, as well as the Norvel .049/.061/.074 engines.

Mark

Ken,

I've only seen it in the beige color.  So out of curiosity I just looked at the Brodak website.   It doesn't show a white 1/2A mount.  It doesn't even show the beige mount. The only mount they have is now showing as black.  Hmmm...

Good info, guys.

Here's another couple of data points:

I have I think four planes flying (there may be more...) with the Renger/Brodak plastic engine mounts. Two are the milky white jobs, one of which is about 10-12 years old. I flew it on a Stop Sign just last weekend. No structural issues so far. Two others are the beige material. One is on a "new to me" plane--a Baby Clown built by Jim Leuken. No problems with the beige ones yet either. I wouldn't be afraid to use either, even used ones, as long as they weren't cracked when they came off the donor plane.

As an alternative, Accurate Models of Renton Washington (206-909-9186) is now making a barstock aluminum mount with threaded holes for machine screws, which were supplied with the unit. Available in either Horizontal or Vertical backplate orientation. I bought one from racer Bill Cave of California recently. Not inexpensive, but a very nice piece! (Let me see if I can post a picture or two....)

Dave

           Certainly a nice piece there Dave. I did find my mount as I put it aside. However, as Mark mentioned, the new ones are black plastic. Who knows maybe they changed the formulations through the years. When I mentioned the beige mount, I've had more than one of these fail and not from ground strikes. They were in storage and dried out and I noticed the splits that formed around the screw holes. These mounts however are probably 12 years old or better. Certainly not a complaint more of a observation.  I just happened to notice that the milky white ones were more flexible. What I also noticed is that the mount that came with the Brodak Baby Clown ( First edition) is extremely flexible . They're also a tad smaller than the Brodak mount. I can't post pictures on here as I find it to be a pain in the rear.

         I use the radial mounts all the time and have been doing so for years because I don't care for  the Dave Brown mounts. I used the Dave brown mounts early on for combat and had more of them fail then I can count. Not only did they cause vibration issues, they would break where the screws passed through. One way to avoid this was to just drill and tap the material for 2-56 screws. Using the supplied sheet metal screws would immediately cause failure in short order as it would swell the material and the failure would occur right on the screw penetration.  This was probably and more than likely due to the taper of the screw forming a wedge.  I had purchased a cast aluminum version somewhat  similar to the Tatone cast aluminum versions but much much lighter. I use those for stunt as they do the job well enough but I seriously doubt they would tolerate a ground strike.