Posted on 01/31/2013 1:05:36 PM PST by mowowie
So i'm supposed to suprise my 7 yr old nephew next thursday and meet him for lunch at school for some kind of whatever thing... Anyways i thought i'd bring him a cool gift of one of those Cox .049 engine tethered race cars only to find that they they don't make them anymore? I looked it up on wiki since amazon seemed to be down. Production stopped around 4 years ago. Aparrently wiki is barred from FR so i can't post the thread but i had no idea of all the variants of this motor, wow......anyways.. JEEEEEZZZZZZ.....i grew up with those things, the planes, the helicopter, the cars, the stupid things i built with those engines attached..... Really makes me sad. There's still E-bay i guess and all but still. It seems that there is almost nothing left....
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
My freinds and i built many a model rocket, my second being “Big Bertha”, my first rocket i got on my b-day the day Elvis died....can’t remember the name of that one.....My mother was crying her eyes out the whole day.
Ayways, over time we realized that the rocket body itself was a money waste....We started to glue the fins right onto the engines.
kinda took the fun out of recovery but half the time there was no recovery.
we called them pocket rockets.
Same here. Sigh. A much simpler time, or so it seemed.
i was just thinking of the Cox UFO flying saucer.
Man, I always wanted that thing as a kid but never got it.......
I had the same luck as you.
The cause of my one true, full blown panic attack about 2:00AM in the basement 40 years ago. That wasn't fun at all!
Now I've changed to the R/C stuff and all we have to worry about is lipoly batteries exploding LOL
You might enjoy this. I think it is extraordinary, but we’ll see if it catches on:
http://circlecycleice.com/page9.php
I had three or four of the tethered airplanes;
P-40 Warhawk
P-51 Mustang
F-4U Corsair
I even had the competitor (Estes ?) acrobat airplain in bright orange.
Loved those things.
When I got bored with them, I’d shave the vertical stabilizer, which was always pointed to the left to cause the tethered plane to turn left. Then, I’d lock the elevator in a 10-degree position and let the plane roar down the street until it took off and careened into some neighbor’s house.
I now recall the Stuka, which we loaded with M-80s for her final flight.
Why be stuck on cords when you have RC?
Not to mention the engine life.
I have a box of Megatech, OS and Traxxas engines, all dead before their time because I ran them lean and HOT.
Now, I run them fat and wet and while I don’t get the acceleration or top end, they start within two or three pulls every time and my glow plugs last through a gallon of 20%.
No, I’m not being sarcastic in the least, and I have more nicks and cuts on my fingers and hands than my grandson’ll ever have. He’ll probably never change a tire, much less tear an automobile engine apart in the garage. Or fix a broken chain on his bike with a spoke and a pair of pliers.
Life is waaaay too safe today.
Wow that thing looks pretty amazing.
I’m gonna read more....
“..... and let the plane roar down the street until it took off and careened into some neighbors house”
I think i might of hung out with you when i was a kid....Or at least i should have...
The following just came over the transom today. It, too, is pretty amazing.
http://www.flixxy.com/volkswagen-levitating-car.htm#.UQsCa2eoTaE
Yes, one of the many thousands of disappointments of childhood that gradually shaped me into the merciless psychopath I am today.
It all started when my x-ray specs failed to produce when aimed at Miss Brodsky, my 4th grade teacher.
Wow I remember that Evil Knievele dragster.
I never drag raced those cars.....i wish i did.
I wanted to show my nephew a cheap way to see gas-powered screamness ripping around in circles....He loves race cars.
electric motors are great but kind of boring.
I was going to buy him a tethered car not plane....he’s only 7.
Great memories. I can smell the fuel burning!
Crashed everyone I had. Funniest one was a hybrid we built using the wheels and axles of drag racer and the engine and prop from a Stuka.
We didn’t use a string and it ran 1/2 the block in a straight line, took a hard left and smashed to pieces against a neighbor’s garage door.
I hear you, it seems those days are long gone.
Brian from Canton.
Yeah, me too. Then we found out about launch rods....Still crashed a lot of them, though. Had a Big Bertha that crashed so many times she was about 6 inches long when the fins finally burned off.
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