Quarter-Scale Merlin

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Personal Note

I'm a mechanical engineer, with a B. S. in mechanical engineering from San Diego State University, and an M. S. in mechanical engineering from UCLA (which I got at the age of 34, being a late starter). I had a relatively short but fairly successful career as an engineer, which included doing a lot of programming as well as mechanical (and even a little electronic) design. From 1990 to 2000, I was a staff engineer at UCSD (University of California San Diego), where I worked with physicists, helping to turn their ideas for space instrumentation into reality. Some parts I designed and built are flying around up there. When the project ended, nothing else that looked good was available, so I took early retirement at the age of 56.

This allowed me to concentrate on my other interests, one of which is the Quarter-Scale Merlin. I actually started working on it sometime in the late 80's, and I've put in a lot of time on it since then. It's not the first V-12 engine I've built, however. The way this all got started was a result of my wandering into a model store in the early 80's, and noticing model four-stroke engines. I've always been a big fan of Ferraris, and somehow the thought of building a quarter-scale Ferrari V-12, using the valves out of one of these engines occurred to me. It took several years, but I built a running quarter-scale Ferrari 250 engine. Mostly it's machined out of bar stock, but the carburetors and valve covers are cast. Maybe someday I'll get back to it.

As another result of going into model stores, I started paying more and attention to warbird models, like the P-51. This eventually lead to a great interest in W.W.II history, including several trips to Europe to visit Normandy, etc. (twice with veteran's groups; I was at Normandy on June 6, 1994, when President Clinton spoke at the ceremonies, and later talked to some veterans of the landings while looking down with them at Omaha Beach. I wondered if Clinton, the draft dodger, got anything out of this).

Anyway, at some point I said, hey, if I can build a Ferrari V-12, why not build a Quarter-Scale Merlin? Partly, this was a way to express my feelings about the sacrifice and intensity of the war years, a time when it seemed like everything that people did somehow meant a great deal more. That's definitely not to say that everyone was pulling together - even the shirker's actions became more important - but fortunately the latter were not a deciding factor.

The prototype Merlin, which first ran in early 1994, had a few investment castings, a few sand castings, and some parts machined from bar stock. The valve covers were vacuum-formed plastic. I sent a picture to Model Airplane News, which ran in their Airscoop section, and I got lots of inquiries. I thought at the time it would only take a few more months to produce the remaining investment castings. Wrong! The crankcase took almost two years to work out. The place that casts it says they were very, very impressed when they saw the final wax, and that it is one of the most complex castings they do.

Finally, after years of work, and becoming more and more proficient at building investment casting wax molds, all the castings needed to build a complete Merlin got done. All but a very few of the drawings are done, and work continues on them. Also, work continues on additional parts, such as a scale coolant header tank, and making the magnetos into functioning distributors. Frankly, I probably will never be 'done' with this project.

Anyway, the bottom line is, despite the amount of time I continue to spend on the Quarter Scale Merlin, it still is not the only thing which takes up my time, and if I am going to continue to work on it and continue to produce castings and drawings, I don't have much time available to spend chatting about it, as interesting as that might be. My telephone number is in the phone book, but because lack of time, and my annoyance with telemarketers, I let my answer machine handle calls. Please make all requests for information by mail or email.

- Richard

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