First I will talk about the 3W
factory and some of their new products that are coming out
and that are already out. When we first arrived at the factory
our chins just hit the floor. Every thing is all marked and
goes in its own place. It is like walking into Home Depot
but only 3W engines up on the racks. There are thousands of
Cyl, pistons, cranks, cases, carbs, and everything else that
it takes to make this huge company run. The factory is three
huge buildings that are connected together. The building has
the machine shop section, engine building section, engine
running section, airplane section, and office.
Some of the new products that 3w has built and ready to
go (we brought plenty back to the U.S.) are engines, computerized
ignitions, and some more top secrete stuff. The new engine
that Bobby, Qui Que, Billy, and I really like were the new
light weight 3W 212cc Four Cylinder. We ran them at the
factory with a 30x14 at over 6,600 rpm, 34x12 at around
6,000 rpm, and a 36x10 at 5,600 rpm. This engine is so smooth
while running there is almost no vibration. This engine
is already to go, they had at least 900 cases, cranks, and
pistons to build them up. Bobby Wilson grabbed one off the
shelf and brought it home with us.
3W also has a new 3W 256cc 5-cylinder radial- four-stroke
gas engine ready to hit the market as well. This engine
is done very scale and will be perfect for those of you
that really like those engines. As for ignitions 3W has
a new computerized ignition. With a lap top computer you
can program the ignition curve, and also get rpm read back
from it. This will be out on the market in 4-6 months I
believe.
Now for Quite setups. At the 3W super show I walked around
and took hundreds of pictures of peoples tuned canisters.
I must say that every person there had a tuned canister
setup. Over in Germany there is not a question about using
them. 99% of the people were using the PeFa canisters. I
did not see any K.S. canisters at all. A few people that
had very short nosed planes made homemade canisters.
Even the war birds and race planes used the canisters,
and they would sometimes put an extension pipe off the canister
so it would locate out into a very scale exhaust. For props
most people were running a two bladed prop. The major brands
of props were 3W wood props, the new 3W carbon props that
will be in the U.S. very soon, Fuchs Carbon props, and the
new style Engel props. Most people were running 32x10 and
32x12's on there 3W 150 with the PeFa canisters. One reason
I think there planes are a little more quit is the way there
planes are setup.
They fly! a lot of planes that are built very light with
composite material. This makes the plane very hard and does
not resonate the sound through the fuse. They also have
a lot better throttle control over there than we use over
here. Every person at the show knew how to use the left
stick (sometimes the right stick). The most popular way
to mount the canisters were with the little hangers that
3W makes. It is a plywood mound with a fiberglass ring in
the center. Inside the fiberglass ring is a rubber tube
cut in half that holds the canisters.
