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I use the ones in my car 😉 But ever since the initial post on increasing the charge rate I now only charge to 4.17v and charge at 3C.

I don’t know, what with you and Mark and your tweaking and trimming sessions 😂

How cold is in sunny East Yorkshire ??

Looks like you've a braw day dawning this morning Nick, it's glorious just at the minute- hope you have a great weekend on the water.😎👍

Fingers crossed toto. I am currently listening to the rain falling, and watching the wind steadily increasing. No flying for me today, I suspect, although if the weather window opens just a crack......

Good suggestions, but GrayAce doesn't fly in a club environment, and it's pretty much certain those planes, with their greater inertia, will be damaged (possibly terminally) very quickly if he's going it alone. And they will need an even bigger flying site for any element of safety.

Rearranging the mechanical linkage may fix the issue on the ground, but surely once the airflow hits the surface, the load in the servo is going to change, and it could be back to square one, with potentially worse consequences...... swap the servo out.

My go to for windy weather would be something like a Max Thrust Aggressor or similar. Using a powered glider may seem counter intuitive but they tend to be a bit more slippery. Alternatively, an original (as in Chris Foss kit, not foamy) Wot 4 or similar is tough to beat and makes a decent trainer to transition. I think the small foamy models you suggest are going to just be a frustration ultimately, and no more capable in a wind than your heli.

@GreyAce That F4U is pretty much the same as the FW190 and P51 - all around the 400mm mark. I think one of those would be too challenging as a first plane, in the wind, but it's not a huge investment, and as long as you're not around people or livestock for when it gets away from you, it'll cause little damage. You'll need a much bigger field than for your heli though, and the range is supposedly quite limited - I only mention this because it WILL get blown downwind. Truth be told they're so small, visibility becomes an issue before range.... and they do bounce well when crashed. Although they are sold as 'ideal for beginners' or someone such blurb, they really aren't, as they need to be flown relatively quickly. Given your perseverance with helis, I suspect you'll be OK, but it's not ideal. Something like the Volantex Ranger may be more suitable as it's bit bigger and slower. Probably even more affected my the wind though...... hmm, you are setting yourself a challenge! Yesterday, the wind was between 15 and 20 mph at my flying field, and my little FW190 stayed in the car....... it would have flown, but I wouldn't have had much pleasure from it.

Fair enough,well 15mph or near wind I guess but wind that's just a tad too much for a small heli,something like that.

20 mph winds grounds many pilots with large planes unless you want to go slope soaring

In regards to learning I am flying on a sim on my tablet cos obviously I gotta learn etc.

All servos and pushrods / control surfaces act as a closed loop control circuit and any control system can go unstable under certain circumstances if the gains are too high and there is not enough damping. This is a slightly simplistic way of looking at it and the reality and associated maths is very complicated. It is possible that the mass of your rudder coupled with the mechanical throws that you have are hitting a resonance point and causing control instability. By gently touching the pushrod, you are introducing a small amount of damping which takes it away from the unstable point. Some servos will suffer more than others and with tolerances even two examples of nominally the same type may react very differently. It is safest just to swap the servo out for a different and better type but you could try changing the mechanics of your system a little by moving the pushrod onto a different hole on the control horn or servo arm - yes this will change the overall rates but to a certain extent you can compensate by using servo end point adjustment and rates etc. Good luck Simon

Which li_ion cells are you using for your charge box?

Yeah I am just wanting something to handle really strong breeze of like oo 15 to 20mph for example and not mad conditions but just a strong breezy day which my Helis just can't cope with but a warbird could fly into the wind and at least let me learn,sure I gotta learn I accept that but yeah I gotta start somewhere,I have found a F4U with quite advanced features and it certainly won't break the bank but yeah I am still looking and thinking.

I doubt that a 400mm span foamy warbird will handle windy weather any better than your helicopter. I would also respectfully suggest that your obvious competence as a heli pilot will not be any guarantee of your competence as a fixed wing pilot. A bit like swimming and fishing, both water based but no crossover in terms of skills.

Recently, a guy in one of the Clubs I fly at decided to give up the hobby and sold off all his fleet. My eye was caught by what looked like a pair of reduced size Chilli Breezes. It turned out that they were, in fact, Bell Hops. These are 40 in span sports electric design by Sid King for simple bell motors and 4 function R/C. It has taken me some time to sort them out and bind them to my JR DSX9 Tx that uses the Spektrum radio design. After a couple of false starts, I managed to fly both of them this afternoon. When I got to the field it looked like I was going to get a drenching but all that materialised was a few large drops of rain. So, out with the Bell Hops and check them out. I flew the yellow and red one first. I noted that the CG was towards the front of where I would have placed it. Once airborne, it needed some up elevator but no aileron or rudder trim. As I'm used to flying F3A aerobatics I found the power on this one to be a bit below par but the prop being used was on the small side so there is room to increase prop size and thus release more power. It will need a check with a Wattmeter of course and that might mean a change from the 30A ESC to a 40A one. After 6 mins of flying around relatively sedately although I did fly 2 or 3 largish loops, the flight pack showed it was still half full. So, 8 mins might be achievable with this setup. The red and blue one was next and flew a bit better especially on how the ailerons felt. But the power was well down on the first one. I will need to check the motor and ESC to see if any more power can be pulled out of them. I suspect though, that in order to get nearer to 200 W /lb I will need to change the motors and ESCs. We shall see! Talking of seeing, in the grey skies that were there for these flights, the small size of the Bell Hops made them difficult to see clearly! The biplane in the photo is a 2 m Citrin, a Wolfgang Matt design from 2013 I think. It looks fabulous, to me(!), which is why I still have it. It doesn't have quite the same aerodynamic refinement of my current 2 m mount, the B J Craft Anthem but still flies very well. The difference between the 2 smaller models and the Citrin was like chalk and cheese. Once I've sorted out the CG on the little ones they will fly a lot better but in comparison, the Citrin was rock steady in the slightly gusty conditions - you can't beat size! I managed to get in 4 practice flights with the Citrin but none of them was really acceptable. The Citrin needs a dedicated trimming session with some minor tweak to side thrust and some minor tweaks to the knife edge mix and a tad more down elevator to make the inverted spin entry a bit more positive. Peter

I experimented today. Stuck two pieces of light ply to a scrap piece of foam, one using the contact method and one using the traditional glue method. As you said the one with the contact method adhered instantly with no wiggle room and was solid from the moment that the two parts made contact. The one using the traditional method could be slid around for quite a while, and took a lot longer for the glue to cure, I'd say a couple of hours at least, but once it had cured it was as solid as the contact method. So in my finding, the contact method is a lot quicker and allows you to conform the parts to any curves without any pinning, but the grab is instant and does allow any wriggle room. The traditional glue method, allows repositioning, takes much longer to cure and would need pinning to conform to any non-flat shape, but once cured seems just as secure. Guessing the longer cure time is because glue is open to the air.

Arrived at Loch Earn this afternoon for a weekend's waterplane flying. Already experienced 3 of the 4 seasons today but managed to get a couple of early flights under my belt while conditions were favourable. Not expecting to see summer anytime soon though.

Sounds like what Martin was hinting at earlier, the wiper's probably light in feedback potentiometer or there's a bad connection. I'd be inclined to bin the servo unless you're prepared to open it up & look for an obvious bad connection first.

Just a little thread as I go along Incase anyone else fancies modding one of these cheap little Chinese gliders

Had a fly fly ASW 28 gifted to me, after a little trawl online reading various threads, info and horror story’s decided to do a little four servo wing and aerotow conversion. Not to hard so far, stripped off the wing and whittled down little aileron stock to fill in the trailing edge and flap leading edge, stripped out the rudder servo tray and reinstated just behind to make room for the tow release

So ..... here we are again ..... Friday .... the weather has been favourable for most of the week with some lovely blue skies .... albeit with a degree of light wind. Battery charging duties are complete with my tranny's being done last night and Lipo's the night before. A quick look over my Supercub and all is good. Wind forward to Saturday morning ..... what are we going to get ? So far all is good. I have a date for eleven o'clock at the East Fortune flying field with my mentor, Cub and no less than eight suitable battery packs ....... the big question is ..... how many will I get to use. Circuits, circles, figure eights, aborted approaches, landings ........ the big question is ....... Will I be able to improve enough to enable a questimate as to how far I am to achieving my first attempt at a solo flight. ..... Its that challenge and mindset that forges me on and provides the target / goal I need to make me try to push myself and improve ..... we all need a goal. Stay tuned in for my field report on my success or failure. Hope you all have a great flying weekend. Toto