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Good stuff Toto and happy flying for you this Saturday coming. My attention will not be on flying this Saturday as its the International North West 200 . The world's top road racers are in town and tomorrow and Thursday is practice day, with the first three races taking place on Thursday evening followed by a break on Friday and Saturday is the the main race day with 6 more races. Super Stock, Super Twin and Super Bike etc etc. The speeds those bikes reach are not for the faint hearted and all on public roads. I think if it was me on board a Honda or Ducatti going for a lap around the course at lightning pace I surely would have a laundry problem 😂 lol. I take my hat off to those brave young men who line up on the starting grid hoping for NW200 glory and a place on the podium. The great Joey Dunlop was a hero of mine. My late father supplied pub grub for many years to Joeys Bar in Ballymoney where Joey and his wife ran a very successful business. Sadly Joey is no longer with us but bar is still as popular as ever and still in the hands of the Dunlop family. I had the privilege and pleasure of meeting the great man on many an occasion and he was such a humble and likeable person. His charity work is well known and it was on a trip to Estonia with vital aid for the underprivileged that Joey lost his life. While there he took part in a friendly motor bike race which ended in tragedy. Among his many achievements was 26 victories at the Isle of Man TT. He will be forever remembered. We wish all the riders a safe weekend on the North Coast and that the spectators enjoy the summery weather which has been forecast for the event.

when you say channel 7 for battery, do you mean the Rx battery, if so just Y lead a servo for the choke operation off that. But could you note just put in a manual actuation, cable or pushrod, typically on a petrol engine you put the chole on flick/spin it till it fires with the choke on (and it then stops), choke off, restart allow a min or so to warm up, then fly.

A rare ray of sunshine .... 😄 thats good as my attention is fully on discharging and I am nearly at the end of the road with that. happy days ..... one step closer to Lipo management heaven toto

Your batteries won't lose any oomph by being charged days before you use them for flight. The issue is that leaving them fully charged for a length of time - weeks or months, some would say several days, ultimately degrades their long term lifespan. Lipos do not self discharge in a few days to any extent, they are not like NiMhs in that regard.

Kick the burning LiPo away from the shed into clear space and use the extinguisher on any small conventional fire in the shed - from outside…unless there’s anything in it that might go bang. Beware of spreading the fire with the blast from a pressurised extinguisher! If there’s any chance of it spreading to where people are, warn them and make sure they get clear immediately. Ignore the burning LiPo if it’s clear of anything flammable - you won’t extinguish it…and avoid the smoke!

Hi all, Im using a R617FS channel receiver and using all 7 channels, the usual 1-4 then 5 retracts, 6 retracts, 7 battery, Im using a DLE 20, this being my first petrol its on an Kyosho .90 Spitfire, I can't get to the choke to do it manually, no matter how I try, so I'm looking at using a servo, but have no spare channel, is there a way to link it to a used channel some how, my radio futaba T10CG, any help much appreciated.

I've just bought a new PC with W11 Pro ready installed and all my W10 software still works though it took a while to get everything installed from my old PC. Even my very old Microsoft Office 97 Pro works. To make it more user friendly I use the Classic Start s/w because I prefer words to pictures. It was easy to transfer all my data because I had a SATA 250 MB SSD (stuck in with double-sided tape) in my old PC which I used as a data back-up and stuck it (literally) into my new one even though it has a terrabyte SSD. Fortunately, the new PC has a DVD drive and that made loading a lot of my s/w easier. I prefer the OS to be transparent and I really don't notice too much difference. All I'm interested in is net access (Firefox) emails (Thunderbird) and I managed to transfer all my bookmarks and passwords across without too much fuss. If you're just updating an existing machine you won't have the hassle I had.

Is that an 'official' Phoenix model? Some of the used-created models are as unrealistic to fly as you can get .........

Well .... looking forward .... as usual ..... we are meant to have a mini heatwave coming ..... I'll believe it when I see it. however ..... it does ( believable or not ) give room for optimism. In fact, even without the heatwave, we have been doing rather good on the whole the last few weeks so I'm booking myself in for a Saturday session. The batteries are already charged and I accept that charging them this early ahead of Saturday, they may lose a bit of their Oomph. I also know that the past has shown that even with a less than fully charged battery, I am getting 7 minute flights with around 30% being left in the tank so happy to have that " early charging " option. I dislike having to rely on me being available on the Friday night before the Saturday to do my charging. If anything untoward crops up .... it puts me either under pressure ..... or means a night shift in the shed. I'm already thinking ahead as to what I shall be doing. ....... Uber focused ...... 😄😄😄 roll on Saturday toto

Neddy as you have noticed flying on a simulator is nothing like the real world. Simulators have their place and uses, it helps you work out what the sticks do and it also speeds up the disorientation issue when the plane is flying towards you. It also allows a little practice when the weather is un-flyable. That is about as far as I would use your simulator. At the field is totally different. Don't get disheartened. Your instructor will have your best interests at heart. Take your time and enjoy learning the lessons. Sometimes what you think is a small insignificant step is really a quantum leap. We had a young visitor over the weekend, a 20 something year old who saw what we were doing and thought it was easy. 3 flights later he was mentally worn out from having to concentrate so hard for so long.

To be honest I found Windows 10 to be nothing but a pain in a donkeys rear end..... so i scrapped it and went back to windows 7 on my pc & laptop and both are still working perfectly

Large bucket full of water to chuck an on fire lipo in is likely to be more use than an extinguisher which can't extinguish it anyway, it won't stop it burning but will prevent damage to anything else, or let them burn themselves out.

You would hope that by now, any significant security issues have been addressed meaning security updates are not essential..... In the future, of course, the number of commercial programmes able to run on W10 will decrease.

Probably because your PC doesn't have a V2 TPM (https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/what-is-tpm-705f241d-025d-4470-80c5-4feeb24fa1ee) on the motherboard which is a Windows 11 prerequisite. Windows 10 continues to get updates until 14/10/2025 and past that date as long as your software works just carry on using your current PC.

I've been saying for years that Safety Car rules are farcical. Unfortunately, VSC is sometimes just not enough to keep things acceptably safe.

No subscriptions for the Windows Operating System. You pay a subscription for Office 365. As Martin says, there are many free alternatives available. And you can get full versions of Office online for a pittance (one off charge) if you don't mind using an older version. I think I paid about £10 for an install on a single computer.

Why bother, I've got one desktop computer running Windows Vista, one running Windows 7 and a laptop running Windows 10. The only reason I can think of is support for peripherals such as printers and scanners.

There's been a long thread somewhere about LiPo fires and fire extinguishers..... bottom line, it's very hard to put out a LiPo fire, but an extinguisher for the shed is a 'must have' in my opinion. Moving chargers outside is a good move.

IIRC, if you go to the Update area on Windows, there is a some stuff on the right hand side of the screen about W11 and whether or not you can update, and why you can't if that's the case. If you actually try and upgrade to W11, and you can't, I THINK it tells you why....... Failing all that, the internet has many apps you can download to see why you can't update..... or it did a while ago when I did ours. I too gave a W10 machine that can't be updated, but I'll carry on using it.

Windows 10 will soon be unsupported. My old computers spec seems enough on paper to run Windows 11 but Microsoft says it's not OK....... Any ideas why not? Its a Dell Optiplex 745 with Intel 6400 2 core 2.13 Ghz, 4Gb Ram and 250 Gb SATA so what is lacking? My guess is that this old computer which was updated to Win 7 or 8 by a Microsoft licensed reseller and then to Win 10 so now MS don't want it upgrade further! I am unwilling to chuck out a perfectly working Windows 10 computer ..........

Time for a little history. In the dim and distant past before they invented colour, bean juice (castor oil) was used in engines as a lubricant. Up to 30% was not uncommon for model engines in those days and castor was a very popular choice. This popularity was for good reasons. It was inexpensive, easy to get hold of, and did a good job as a lubricant. It was also quite viscous which could be an advantage if the fits within the engine were a little suspect as it gummed up the gaps. Crucially, it was better than synthetic oils of the day. Just ask the Germans in WWI. However, castor also makes a dreadful mess and leaves carbon/varnish all over the innards of your engine. The goo on the outside can also gum up cooling fins as dirt and bumble bees get suck to it, exhausts get blocked, and its prone to setting solid leaving your engine totally locked up. It is also a natural product and so its performance will always vary. As a result, you need more of it to guarantee the required lubrication. Fast forward to today and we have synthetic oils which are assembled molecule by molecule using computer controlled voodoo. Engines are made from vastly superior materials and with much tighter tolerances. Since the 90's 15% synthetic oil has been all you need and frankly even this is excessive with 10% probably a more realistic figure today. It always causes a row as not everyone has moved with the times but castor is a dead lubricant now and best forgotten. As they used to tell you at school, quality over quantity. When i was working at laser i did experiments with oil content. This was an offshoot from petrol engine work i was also doing. The petrol engine was running at 40:1 (2.5% i think that is?) at the time, so i wondered if a glow engine would work on that. I mixed up methanol and oil at the same ratio and left it running at 75% throttle for an hour, when it finally ran out of fuel. I then flew some of my own engines on 5% oil for a few years, this was no bother, and then introduced the low oil fuel at 7% to give a big improvement over standard 15% oil fuel, and give room for improvement later. Some customers have run their OS engines on the low oil fuel and had no problems, but i havent tested that so its on you if you have a go and it fails. Frankly, i think OS's would be fine, but as i dont fancy getting yelled at when someone kills their prized motor its not a recommendation from me, but 15% is fine for everything. If you stick to 15% oil, which you might as well do unless you have a laser, you can clean up your exhaust residue significantly by tuning the engine for peak performance and nut having it chuff around half a turn rich of peak and with a slow run needle set so the engine is on the verge of hydraulic lock. Always tune for peak performance on both needles.

There are a number of collectors of vintage transmitters and other radio gear, both for nostalgia's sake, but also for conversion to modern 2.4ghz use. You would reach a larger audience if you posted on the Net Zero site and the BMFA Classified ads. Hope that you find a good home for your gear, it would be a shame for it to just go in the bin.

Has anyone put a motor into the Petrel? Am thinking of doing this and some guidance would be great.8

Back to the shed for another discharging session. Following the concerns of my charging set up, I decided to change my charging set up ..... slightly ..... and since it is a reasonable night ..... I moved it outdoors. should anything untoward happen ..... I have a master plan ........ I boot the table clear of the shed and let them burn out in the open. I really must remember to pick up a fire extinguisuer as part of a slightly more robust plan ..... meanwhile ..... fingers crossed. toto