My first flight with Phil, Susan, Rex, and Laura. What a great time this was.Here are photos of the trip tooo..My PPG Mexico Pictures

Today, after a few months of not being able to fly. She startred.

She took a bit of convincing.

I had an motorcycle battery that I used for my starting my RC airplanes. I decided to charge it last night, and charge the battery to my PPG motor.

Today hooked up a cigarette lighter to the motorcycle battery. I had an adaptor running from the battery with a pair of alegator clips on the other end.

This did not work, as after a few turns, I heard a clicking on the ppg motor. The starter was not getting enough power was my guess.

Okay, let’s try just a regular pair of alligator clips. The motor cranked, but was just barley enough. When I disconnected them from the battery, the wires were VERY hot. The wires were about a 16 or 18 gauge.

Okay, this told me that the wire guage was not think enough for the current being drawn.

So I took some old speaker wire, it was about 8 or 10 gauge. Put some quick loop connectors on it, the kind you crimp on the end of bare wire.

This wire was connected to the battery. It was NOT mounted in the motor, and was only an “extension” to the battery. It was very difficult to work on the battery when mounted to the motor.

After a few cranks it vrooooommmm.. She started.

Once started I let the motor run for a minue or so. Letting it warm up. I check the new sparkplug for coloruation to see if it was lean or rich gas mixture.

Nothing yet.

After about the 3rd startup, the engine was warm, and I needed to adjust the low needle valve. 1) because it i heard a metal tinging sound (means it’s to lean). 2) because the ideal (when throttle off) was a bit higher than I wanted.

This will need to be adjusted sometime in march when I am able to fly again. For those of you who are not from the north. Jan/Feb/March are usually the coldest, and snoweyest months.

So as of now, the motor is disassembled, and in my basement for further tweaking.

In the mean time, I found a better Reserve placement through a new product just released.