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I rang the Tinnitus helpline number......no answer....just kept ringing.

My wife told me she could think of 14 reasons why she wanted a divorce, plus my stupid obsession with tennis! I said “that’s 15 love”. Moderator jokes dept. ?

KC I don't think ours is the only club in the area with a mature membership. It is something I have half an eye on and I will discuss with the committee as to how and if we approach increasing the junior membership. So here one of the pictures our photographer took on the day for Ospreys Model Aircraft Club. Sadly I did not know how grubby her camera had become prior to the shoot otherwise I would have cleaned it before hand.

Here's our crew from Ramsey Model Aero Club, I'm on far right with MPX Heron

Stick the circle of plastic card over it that you have just cut out.

So here is a quick way to get that look . All you need is white board marker and a piece of roughly .75 to 1mm plastic sheet . You could probably use a plastic drink bottle too . The tools needed are -sharp knife to cut the plastic . Hot glue gun and cheap compass cutter to make the hole . Make a card template first which will cover the existing balsa front deck . Make it tuck under the windscreen by 10mm. On the centre starting from the front draw two touching circles , the size of your big marker . Ignore the first as that just provides the correct spacing . Cut a neat hole for the second one which will only just take the pen. Once the card template looks ok, replicate the shape into plastic . Cut a hole slightly bigger to accommodate the pen in your balsa top deck . It will go through the balsa spine but that doesnt matter as the cover will reinforce it later . Now cut the bottom 20mm off of your pen . Push it in to the plastic and put a thin smear of hot glue around the underside only . Dont leave big blobs because the skin wont sit nicely . Now , using the hole as a guide , put a bead of hot glue down the centre line and add the armour plate . Let it go off , then repeat for each lower side . You can pack little shims under your cowl rear edge to get the gap about right . The new armour should be slightly proud . It will look a little the top till you paint it . The Fuel cap should be painter shiney silver . Nice trick for little money , plus you can have a little knock of anyone else's Spitfire pointing out that they couldnt fill it up !

Great seeing all the clubs efforts in support of the attempt. Colchester MAC managed to got 22 models in the air for the attempt despite the efforts of the weather (why oh why could we have not had the weather we had on the Saturday). Great fun was had by all. What was encouraging was we had members ranging from about 15 to well in their 80's flying, and of fairly new experience as model pilots to some who have most of their life. Regardless all were very happy and pleased to have played their part, and all models survived the attempt.

I see that Model Shop Leeds are going to be the UK stockist for Dane RC's range of models. Will be interesting to see the costs compared to a direct purchase.

Handyman I wish you well for your practice / experimentation Sunday and I hope it goes well for you. Your cross wind approach made me smile as I was having exactly those issues a weekend or 2 ago. We have a north / south runway with the pits to the east and we had a 10mph wind coming from the east so I was crabbing in to land with the plane aimed at the pits which seemed weird and wrong. Going back to the rudder / aileron separation discussion, I have a plane in my fleet which will almost not turn using the bank and yank technique. Yet if I give a bit or rudder prior to the application of the ailerons then a beautiful scale type turn is executed. I believe the full size machine was much the same although only one corroding frame exists but similar machines from the period by the same manufacturer are reported to follow the characteristic.

Thanks to you too Graham. Its funny, but an old dog can learn new tricks. Going to have to experiment at the club on Sunday afternoon, weather permitting. It's my reactions that I am going to have to improve. The trouble is that my gammy left knee lets me down sometimes, usually when I am hand launching. The least said about that the better!!!

Hi Handyman, Like Andy, I usually steer clear of these discussions as they tend to degenerate into lots of 'Mansplaining', but I thought I'd echo Jon's comments from a particular aircraft I fly. I have a small own-designed spitfire that flies well, but it does exactly what you describe; it drops it's tail in the turns. My first thought was to set a mix, but on further thought, it wouldn't have worked. The reason is that the model was quite neutral in roll, so once in the turn, the ailerons would then be centred and elevator would pull her around. The tail would then drop. So I apply rudder in the direction of the turn AFTER the ailerons are centralised. To complicate matters, I need very little turning left, but a fair bit turning right! That would make setting any mixer a bit complex. Not too sure of the cause, but I enjoy flying the model based on what it's doing. To be honest, isn't this what we all aspire to?! So, after all that, I concur with Andy and Jon, try to correct with your thumbs. Good luck Graham

Having designed and printed the exhaust shrouds and stub stacks It was time to move back on the airframe so next up were the gun ports I'm hoping that the inner ones (the larger opening) will produce the distinctive whistle produced by the full size ones!

Great news. I use Leeds shop these days and am always impressed, particularly as they take the effort to list items you can't get elsewhere in the UK.

Bing maps have an OS view that includes 25,000 scale. 25,000 scale shows field boundaries, that can be handy from a landing perspective; 50,000 scale does not. The scale transition is seamless when zooming however apart from the field boundaries, you can tell because footpaths etc are green in 25,000 and red in 50,000. Edited to add, the red/green thing doesn't really apply in Scotland due to the different land access rules.

Now here is an amusing little detail to add that doesnt take very long at all . You may have noticed that on the full sized Spitfire , the additionally thick skin over the fuel tank in front of the cockpit is quite prominent . As is the fuel filler cap and surround . And yet these features are ignored in most models . You can see in this image how the cover is actually sitting on top of the natural skin line .

About ten of us at the field yesterday, lovely evening for flying and a good opportunity to fly my Flair Fokker DVII, shame these kits are no longer available as they do fly extremely well.

They were problematic carbs , as mentioned earlier they were reasonable when new but wore quickly due to vibes . If you can find a modern twin needle carb it will be a lot better. Just make sure the spigot size is the same or find a mate to make an adaptor .

I have a model of a Citabria pro, an aerobatic prototype from the 60's. Fly's well but like your model has to have one aileron up a tad to maintain straight flight, putting in some rudder to do the same upsets other aspects of the flight. Having checked everything I can think of have decided to just live with it.

I heard some good news yesterday. If I have understood the French correctly, all of the four-strokes are going to fly in the same group in this year's Coupe Des Barons. If that happens I look forward to the sound of ten four-strokes in the air at the same time!

Those Webra dynamix carbs good while new but vibration would wear the rather convoluted link and sliding block upsetting the running. My Blertiot XI has a Webra 61 of the same type fitted when the aircraft was built in the 70's. However the carb has been replace with a more modern twin needle carb [ SC I think ] On which it runs very well through the speed range.

On the 6th & 7th June, (the Queens platinum jubilee weekend), an informal vintage glider meet is taking place at the Bwlch, (between Nant-y-Moel & Treorchi) in S Wales. So many of us are busy prepping our old model gliders ready for this event. I'll be taking a Dynaflite Bird of Time and a model I have recently acquired especially for this event, the Robbe Verso. I picked this up from a guy in Warwickshire who hadn't flown it since the 1980's. There is a video below showing me flying it for the 1st time below. So if you are a glider guider with nothing better to do over that bank holiday weekend, come along to the Bwlch and join in the flying and banter with the others.

Here is my video when the PSSA visited The Bwlch in S Wales at the weekend and took part in the record attempt.

Here's the Aberdeen and District Soarers effort. 11 pilots successfully taken to air at Lynne of Skene.