The Quarter-Scale Merlin Prototype
The prototype Quarter-Scale Merlin used glow plug ignition,
and it had relatively simple castings, two valves per cylinder, a timing
belt camshaft drive, and no supercharger - just a simple model airplane
carburetor stuck in the end of a log manifold. It ran on the first
try. It didn't run very well, basically because of poor mixture distribution
in the log manifold, but it was able to swing a scale prop at a pretty
good clip. Further development would have undoubtedly improved things
considerably, but it was decided to proceed with design of the 'real' version,
complete with supercharger.
