The DK -17 4-cycle air-cooled model airplane engine was designed by Peter Tarn and built by Dietmar Kolb, of Germany, in 2004. Mr. Kolb’s model engine is designed to burn methanol on glow ignition. It has a bore of 13.5mm and a stroke of 11.4mm for a total displacement of 1.63cc. It will spin its 8 x 4 propeller up to 12,000 revolutions per minute.
In October 2014, Peter Tarn sent the following information regarding the design:
“A small batch of these engines was produced in Germany by Dietmar Kolb to my design, which utilises the crankcase, crankshaft, piston, and cylinder of the popular Russian MK-17 diesel of 1.49cc capacity. I still have the prototype, which I designed and built as a one-off exercise in 2002-2003, here at Darlington, UK.
“My prototype was photographed by Ken Croft for inclusion in one of Ron Chernich’s on-line articles, (New Zealand), in 2003. Dietmar Kolb and the late Heiner Neuman then contacted me from Germany and requested the drawings, which I happily passed to both parties. I was pleasantly surprised, a year later, to find that a batch had been produced in Germany from my drawings and distributed around the world.
“For the record, the prototype has titanium valves with 6mm diameter heads. The MK-17 main casting had to be modified by machining, to accept a lowering of the cylinder liner. This brought the exhaust and transfer ports down to a level where they did not open at bottom-dead-centre. The camshaft is driven by helical gears and is supported in bronze bushes.”