Yestertainment – The Cox .049: the engine that modern America banned
An evening pause: This bit of technological history with a sad ending.
Hat tip Blair Ivey.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
KILL ME ..!
Love your site Mr.Z.
This single post took me way back. WAY BACK !!
Especially just after having watched the succesful … “THE Launch”.
Congrats SpaceX.
Now back to the neighborhood elementary school play ground.
Wow, did I ever have the nicks and cuts on my “prop flip ignition” finger.
And the aroma of that fuel can juice was so lovely.
Later in life I pondered if it was my .409 fuel, or agent orange from the other side of the world and my life.
THEN the crazy twirling about with the plane guide lines in my grip !!
THEN the crazy death spirial of my plane embedding itself into the local playground fat grass turf.
Instant silence. I could only stagger vetrtigo impared over to the impact site.
Well, not much better than that, back to the repair desk.
Thanks Mr. Z.
I see I’m not the only one who has memories of model airplanes.
My father was the airplane modeller. When I was younger, I kept my distance, partly because of the noise the engines made and, also, one could easily get hurt from the props. (This was before the Chicken Stick came on the market.)
Eventually, my curiosity got the better of me and I started building my own airplanes. I began with some simple hand gliders and made my way through rubber-powered models. I never did get to building an engine-powered plane as I got sidelined with university studies and, later, earning a living.
It saddens me that yet another part of my youth is now gone forever.
Oh man, had a few of those, and some larger ones. My father and brother were into R/C planes, and I flew control-line and free-flight planes for a bit. The .049 was a great engine.
But I was more into rockets — Estes powered from 1/2A to D size. Loved those.
I’m one of those who, as a kid, owned and flew .049 control line models. Some were plastic – like their P-51. Others were balsa that I made from kits.
All powered by the Cox .049.
Even as a high schooler I flew an .049 powered Guillow’s P-51, that I built, in our cul de sac. From across the street came a guy who was formerly an air force pilot. He stepped into the circle with me as I flew and gave advice. Engine quit because the gas was gone?
Nose Down! Nose Down! he’s say.
That was support. I sat with that guy over coffee a few times and told him of my desire to be a pilot. He recommended I start with a tail dragger. Fly that, he said, and you can fly anything.
I loved flying those planes. And they led directly to getting my pilot’s license…..and an RV-8 tail dragger in which I had a great flight yesterday.
But it started with the .049
My dad made me a car battery powered electric starter for mine. Made things so much easier.
I think I burned through a gallon of gas with that thing.
Then I let it crash. I thought it would fly straight and true without the strings. Not so much. It got about a hundred yards before it rolled over and nosed in hard.
Thanks for the memories.
I inherited my father’s model airplane gear and I managed to sell much of it.
One of the items is a hand-held electric starter, which my father got after the aforementioned Chicken Stick. It has a rubber adaptor which fits over a plane’s prop spinner in order to crank the engine.
I advertised it for sale for a few years, but no takers. The video explains why engine-powered models are no longer in fashion, and, indirectly, why nobody bought the starter.
I guess I’m stuck with an antique.
If I were a tech-bro. I would throw money at bringing this all back even if I had to do it at a loss—to have low prices for these.
The reason?
We have GOT to get young people doing something with their hands besides swiping at smartphones.
One of the things I liked about model airplanes was actually building them.
I’d start with a set of plans and I’d figure out what size of balsa wood I needed. Once I collected it all, I’d start cutting. I made templates for the wing ribs out of thin plywood and ran the knife along the edge.
Laying out the pieces on wax paper over top of the plans, gluing them together, pinning them to a board underneath, and waiting overnight for it to dry….. that was part of the fun.
Once it was all built, I’d cover the structure with tissue and brush dope over top of it to get it to stick and give it strength.
Checking the balance and trimming it with a bit of sanding here or a small piece of lead there and, soon, it was ready for either a glide test or, even, a first test flight. That was thrilling in itself, but when it properly flew for the first time, it was a joyous experience. Something I built with my own hands, using my time, effort, and patience was finally airborne!
Although many of the materials may have changed since then (the iron-on film Mono-Kote had come onto the market while I was building my planes and many modellers also used styrofoam, covered with thin plywood, instead of balsa back then), but there’s nothing that beats seeing one’s own creation in action.
Today’s kiddies have no idea of what it’s like.
“””but there’s nothing that beats seeing one’s own creation in action.”””
As an inventor, YUP. Sometimes I almost feel sorry for people that have never experienced that, almost.
There’s plenty of that already going on. Are you actively doing anything on a personal level? That is significantly more effective than posting online.
I am working 7 days a week now.
According to The Beatles, that still leaves you a day free.
I remember lusting after that Cox yellow and blue PT-19 when I was a young kid. Never could convince my dad (though he did help me get started with plastic scale models).
By the time I had both money and free time to get into R/C, most everything had switched to electric. I hung around with guys that still owned internal combustion planes, and we flew them a couple of times, but electric was hard to beat for city flyers.
Alas that time is past, too. Transport Canada made rules, people bitched, and there’s no space left to fly around here. My fleet sleeps in storage. Maybe when I retire, I’ll have time to drive to a distant club and take to the skies again…
Space to fly where I live is also quite scarce.
One thing that’s different now than when my father and I tinkered with model airplanes. Back then, one needed a license to operate an R/C transmitter and I recall seeing the one he had (XM prefix). As far as I remember, no exam was needed, but it was still regulated by the government.
In the years since, many of those frequencies have been designated for un-licensed use, so I can operate on the 27 MHz band if I wanted to and I don’t need a permit, though it’s still channelized here in Canada.
While we’re at it, it might be interesting to see if there’s any YT videos about what happened to the R/C equipment business in North America. Some of the old manufacturers (e. g., Kraft) went out of business a few decades ago and how that occurred is an interesting story in itself.
Search for a website called R/C Hall of Fame. I had designed and flown several successful own design R/C planes before I was 16.
Yes, I owned a Cox .049 plus other engines.
Gave it up to fly full size gliders at age 17 and spent 50 years designing and manufacturing electronic instruments for them.
Now living on 5 acres 11 km out of town, surrounded by farms so will be flying R/C again out of 4 acre front yard.
While people think the .049 was loud (and it’s a pipsqueak compared to engines like the Webra .49 that my father used to have), some modellers built planes that used pulse jet engines. In one magazine article I read, some wag referred to them as the world’s loudest moose call.
Now there is an engine that produces cold
https://phys.org/news/2026-07-quantum-simultaneously-refrigeration.html
A reverse Otto engine