Vintage rat racing

[John Watson]

Rat racing in the sixties was very competitive. I recall we ran Torp 40's on high nitro. I recall there was a lot of trial and error going on. Glo plugs were modified I can't remember exactly how does anyone know about this/

[Tony Drago]

Those were fun times.

[Dan Berry]

A SupreTigre 40 on a Jr Flight Streak with a rib bay removed and six-up in a circle.
Different times for sure.

[bob whitney]

before Glo.Be's stove top's the high nitro 40's would blow the stem seal about half way through the flight.

someone came up with an epoxy that would seal the stem and not blow out (most of the time )

some people still hoard the glo be's  Ballard, McDonold

[L0U CRANE]

Never tried it myself, but I'd heard of the modified plugs Bob mentioned. Somehow, I connect this idea with Champion V-(#?) glows. The high temperature epoxy filled the space around the central post, either replacing or reinforcing the stock insulation and flowed a bit over the top of the plug's threaded body. Lotta work, and guaranteed expensive goop to use in very small batches...

Interesting, but I didn't need to do that for stunters...

[john e. holliday]

I still remember seeing my first Rat Race at City Park of Kansas City KS.   The fence to keep spectaters back was maybe 10 feet from edge of circle.  No helmets for pit men.  There were 6 entries.  The starter said go after all engines were started.  What may him.  Out of the six 2 were still air born and some side cutters being used to cut lines of downed planes.   Also the timers sitting there with a stop watch and a paper pad to mark laps.   Needless to say there was never a 6 up race again until years later we did 6 up with Shoestring Racers.  Also some one found a source for lap counters.   Won my first Rat Race on that circle with no thought of getting hit.  Had Mike MacAdams as my pilot.   It was a two up race when third entry crashed on take off.   That Fox Gold .40 was dependable at that time until the crank decided to part company several races later,  Then it was Super Tigre power. Remember first fast fill was a brake cylinder cup inside of a soldered on fuel can lid with a slit cut in it.  Oh, no shut offs back then either.

[Brett Buck]

Back in the early 70's, Bill "Moose" Allen  sent me a two part powder, mixed with water, placed on the glow seal, and baked for an hour  or so, sealed the plug. But these were for combat. Is this what you are talking about?

     Water Glass AKA sodium silicate.

    Brett

[M Spencer]

In the pommy comics , it was Aryldite to hold the FIREBALL PLUG seal .

the seal was ceramic , so fragile .tho likely mainly stressed fitting the plug hot wire clip .
fireball reputed to have a good element , needs to be done ' from new ' or the stuff wont stick .

Sensable to have a easy fitting plug wire clip , so it dosnt wrench the post , fitting.
Also the weight of the plug wire flapping around at 120 mph dosnt help , so clippeed adjacent the head wouldnt hurt either .

[EddyR]

Back in the 1960’s I was doing work for the Tigre importer on the 35 combat and 40 motors. I got a call from Italy and this person I called Joe said he was sending me a powder and to build a dam of it around the plug anode and then put a drop of Eastman 910 on it. It worked very well. I used it in FF where I ran the 40 over 18,000+ rpm.
 One ounce bottle of eastman 910 cost $100
EddyR

[John Park]

Back in the 1960’s I was doing work for the Tigre importer on the 35 combat and 40 motors. I got a call from Italy and this person I called Joe said he was sending me a powder and to build a dam of it around the plug anode and then put a drop of Eastman 910 on it. It worked very well. I used it in FF where I ran the 40 over 18,000+ rpm.
 One ounce bottle of eastman 910 cost $100
EddyR

Eastman 910?  Never heard of it.  Consult Professor Google. Oh, okay - it was the first cyanoacrylate adhesive.  Many American Trade Marks are not generally known outside the USA, so we have to work out for ourselves that e.g. Saran Wrap is what we call cling-film, and so on. (Sorry, the use of Trade Marks instead of generic terms is a hobby-horse of mine - I used to be a Trade Mark lawyer by profession!)

[EddyR]

 Most of the plugs I reworked went into RC pylon racers. I think that is where Tigre was after the market.RR was not given much work.   I think K&B was used a lot more. In the small contest I entered I used st/29.
Ed

[Mike Hazel]

Getting off the glow plug thing and back to vintage rat racers........   My entrance into the hobby was in the middle of that decade.  The 60's saw quite a change from the beginning of the decade to the end.  It started with mostly combat engines of various makes on various types of planes, mostly going about 100 mph or so. Fast forward to 1969 and it was either Super Tigre or K&B 40 engines mounted on sleek pan style planes, the best nearing 150 mph even with line size increase.  Again, I started in the middle of this using a Fox 36X on a Skat Rat.  Good times.

[EddyR]

  I was flying rat around 1957 until maybe 1965. I think the smallest plane allowed was a 30” wingspan. Like Mike said 100 mph was what most planes did. It got very fast after 1965 and I lost interest. Had two children by 1965 and that became more important than model aircraft.
Ed

[Kennyperkins]

We would use Fireball cold plugs (blue seal). Found that if seal was bright blue in color plug seal was good. If it had a silvery ting seal was no good. We would solve the problem using JB Weld. Seemed to work ok.

[Kennyperkins]

I remember the 1000 and 1400 lap rat races at the King Orange in Jax, Fl. Had a new pair of tennis shoes before the race and totally wore out the right one in one race. Good times with Lambert, Ballard, and the Chambers-Simpson team. Could do the race in a best of 53 minutes if I remember correctly. This was in '73 - '74.

[Trostle]

I remember the 1000 and 1400 lap rat races at the King Orange in Jax, Fl. Had a new pair of tennis shoes before the race and totally wore out the right one in one race. Good times with Lambert, Ballard, and the Chambers-Simpson team. Could do the race in a best of 53 minutes if I remember correctly. This was in '73 - '74.

You mentioned John Ballard.  I watched him do two back-to-back 1,000 lap races.  Another time, he was in a race and there was a tall slim teenager in the race that got behind where he was supposed to be and I was waiting for the disaster that was about to happen.  Ballard literally picked the kid up and placed him where he needed to be.  Disaster averted.

Keith

[Serge_Krauss]

I was fascinated by rat racers at the end of my youthful period in control line. I think the last full CL planes I was working on were a Yak-9 that I finished 40 years later and a full-bore RR with a modified Harter's speed pan, in which I'd bolted a K&B .40. I had a Kilsdonk (I think he made them) tapered, cylindrical tank with a "quick-fill". It was going on it's third set of wings (kept changing my mind as I read the articles) and second tail. The remnants are still up here on my shelf. I also built a tiny .15-powered racer, "Texas-Rat" style, and later, a tailless, TeeDee .049 - powered mouse racer that I still have. The only full sized one I finished was an earlier Dooling .29 powered Harter's "Royal Rodent" with polished pan. It survives because it never flew (too much fun with the stunters). When I retrieved it after 40 years from my parents garage, I was really glad I'd never flown it. Those controls were never free'd up. Gads! It's one thing to watch the "big guys" fly at a Kokomo, Indiana AMA meet, and another just to put one together without advice.  I also had bought an earlier Fox "Combat Spl." and a Super Tigre with intentions to fly rat, but life sort of intervened. So there's the story of what I didn't do. Ha!

[Ken Culbertson]

Used to fly Rat at every contest back in the 60's.  Flew for a guy named Bob Lipscomb. He could pit so fast that it felt like the plane never stopped going forward.  Hard to beat those old multi event meets.  Running from circle to circle.

Ken