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My last project from how she looked when I picked her up to now all completed and looking resplendent with her new cowling, fitted and painted. This was a complete back to bare airframe restoration and E conversion. She is a Bowman’s Model, Miles Magister 1 designed in 1979 with an 85 inch span and an AUW of 13 1/2lbs (recommended 10lbs), running a 6S system turning a 16x8 wooden prop. She fly’s really nice even with the extra weight.

Can’t be bothered to trawl through all 3 pages to eliminate repetition, but what seems to be missing from this rant is that simply regarding BMFA as a means of obtaining insurance misses the whole bigger picture by a country mile. It is also a bit of a slap in the face to the numerous volunteers who man Buckminster and do much of the donkey work on the site in return for expenses only, which I can attest consists of 40p/mile and that won’t run my (non-electric) car. Buckminster is a terrific asset and some of the opprobrium directed towards it above is, at best, ill -informed. I’d prefer not to be Mod-cancelled so I will leave that point where it lies. Combining the back-office function of Leicester with the current resources of Buckminster is bound to create significant savings across the entire Association. As for golf, I doubt you’d be able to buy a two-round green fee for £47, certainly not round here, and that’s merely two good walks ruined, in one day. Multiply by 365; “do the math”. There is a very parsimonious strain in a minority of aeromodellers, manifesting itself in buying £3 servos from a counterfeiter in China then whining when it fails; it’s a great shame that this frame of mind extends to annual subs for an organisation which covers all our backs. Phil, did you eat all the pies too? BTC

Well, I covered the increase by not having my usual few glasses of red last night. Some people like to complain, others don't......

In the Chancellor's Autumn statement - atheist organisations will now be able to apply for the same tax status as charities since they don't have any prophets.

Indeed. It's interesting to note that the OP's previous posts have mostly revolved around issues with mail order, including not being able to easily order expensive models costing several hundred pounds - the sort of high end foamie ARTFS that were discussed in the Big Question thread. It sort of puts the complaints about less than a quid a week BMFA subscription into perspective.

Did you see that the LMA is now going to come under the BMFA and LMA members will need to pay for BMFA membership as well as the LMA is no longer going to provide insurance. So, you might want to just carry on being a BMFA member. The increase is nothing to do with Buckminster. It is to do with the reducing membership but having not taken the necessary steps to manage the costs of the BMFA down. I understand that we are now down to around 28,000 members and there are many other calls on the BMFA subs. I do wish you would take the time to ask your Club representatives what the situation is before transmitting a lot of misinformation on this forum. The BMFA website gives this information and someone has already posted on that. If you think that the work the BMFA has led on to get us to Article 16 exemptions and in helping to guide the CAA away from some of the wilder ideas that have been tabled then clearly you do not value the fact that you have been able to continue flying your model with virtually no difference whereas it could have been much worse. That requires a lot of travel to meetings in both Europe and into London (usually) and some of these meetings are multi-day events. So you think that £12 will make a difference to your hobby over the year? I suspect when you tot up all that you spend on it then the extra, which I thought was £5 actually, is going to make any difference then I would be mightily surprised.

Congrats to JohnS, Tony & Igor for their League's podium 2023... A massive thank you to JohnP for his nursing contribution to our League throughout the season. See you all again next season, I hope... 🏁 Cheers Chris

Evening all! With the Channel4 highlights programme coming towards the end, it's time - for the last time this year - to see how we all scored today. Remember that Tony needs to score 56 points more than John S to catch him at the top of the league, and more than that to beat him... Pos League Rank Team Manager Pts 1 1 0 Pitts Specials john stones 191 2 3 0 Iqonic racing iqon 184 3 4 0 GASTON Formula Chris McG 180 4 6 1 DMFC Racing Team Simon Webb 167 5 2 0 Essex Racing Tony Clark 165 6 8 0 PSS Power Flyer 156 7 15 0 teewrex John Tee 154 8 5 1 Revers Racing Pete B 152 9 10 0 Hans Brake Zoonie 145 10 12 1 Mannschaft Carl Brotherton 144 11 11 0 Team Charles Picd Charles Pic 127 12 9 0 The JP Specials johnpflyrc 120 13 7 2 LetsGoTotoLetsGo GrumpyGnome 119 14 13 1 Norfolk Flyers Kevin Fairgrieve 111 15 14 0 Oyster f1 Glenn Philbrick 99 16 16 0 Torque of the devil Stu 68 And top spot today is taken by John S with 191 points. Second today is Iqon with 184 points. And third today is Chris with 180 points. Well done to today's top three! Well I think we all know that John S must have held on to top place overall, but let's check the chart for confirmation; Pos League Rank Team Manager Pts 1 1 0 Pitts Specials john stones 4220 2 2 0 Essex Racing Tony Clark 4138 3 3 0 Iqonic racing iqon 4006 4 4 0 GASTON Formula Chris McG 3948 5 5 1 Revers Racing Pete B 3701 6 6 1 DMFC Racing Team Simon Webb 3694 = 7 2 LetsGoTotoLetsGo GrumpyGnome 3694 8 8 0 PSS Power Flyer 3545 9 9 0 The JP Specials johnpflyrc 3485 10 10 0 Hans Brake Zoonie 3362 11 11 0 Team Charles Picd Charles Pic 3278 12 12 1 Mannschaft Carl Brotherton 3266 13 13 1 Norfolk Flyers Kevin Fairgrieve 3245 14 14 0 Oyster f1 Glenn Philbrick 2948 15 15 0 teewrex John Tee 2804 16 16 0 Torque of the devil Stu 2588 And it is indeed John S who takes the title as winner of the Modelflying Forumites Fantasy GP league for 2023. Well done, John. And well done to Tony in second and to Iqon in third. There were a few place changes in the table today though. Both Pete and Simon move up a place to 5th and 6th, with GrumpyGnome having a good excuse to live up to his name today due to his 2-place drop to 7th (or maybe 6th equal - I'm not entirely sure what the difference is supposed to be between 'position' and 'League Rank'!) A little further down the table there's a place swap with Carl grabbing 12th from Kev, who drops to 13th. And so the 2023 season has come to an end. 2024 has a 24-race schedule, starting on 2 March with a Saturday night race in Bahrain, and followed by another Saturday night race in Saudi Arabia. Pre-season testing is scheduled for the week before the first race.

Wife...” where have you been luv?” Husband..” burying our old cat” ” What ! For three hours ! “ ” “Yes, it kept struggling “

The first of the landing lights is finally moving 🙂 All parts of the hinge are from glass fibre, which is robust and easy to glue. The complete piece including the servo is at 25 grams. Next jpb is applying the clear cover and an extensive update on the wiring... Timo

Big Congratulations to John S. for winning this years league and big thanks to John P for keeping us all well informed 👏👏👏 Essex Racing made three team changes over the course of the season ending with, Red Bull, McLaren, Aston Martin, Alonso, Norris and Piastri. End is season stats showed an average of 31 prediction points per race. esdexAston Martin

Well done to Top 3 in the race 😎.,....and well done to Top 3 in the league! 😎 Congratulations to John Stones on an impressive result!!! 👍 And a massive thank you again to John P for his amazing commentary and efforts throughout the year!!! Thanks John P👍 .......and well done again to John Stones 👍

hobby flight u s airforce insignia red spot on match if that helps

Not sure what it is but I think it eats nuts.

Is it a Norwegian Blue ?

Sponsorship and the Buckminster reserve. The accounts for Buckminster have always been kept separate and the policy is not to use members subs to fund it, even though we all benefit from it indirectly as mentioned previously.

No money from the main BMFA income, (subs), is used to fund Buckminster those that use the centre and people travel from all across the country to do so, pay to use it.

I am glad to see that the new laws and paying the government to fly is going to stop illegal flying,,,😂

An opportunity that we had for 98 years before somebody decided to charge us for it… Brian.

Hello all , Another great scale item , and very much needed to slow this bird down on landings are the speed brakes. Flying buddy Ben Van Raemdonck , also 3D printing enthousiast made the moving parts for the brakes. It's Just a test print and a lot of time will be spent adapting them to the wings and form 4 complete drop-in brake units .The wiring is already inplace in the wings up to the receiver .

Before Buckminster became available the BMFA quite often had to hire venues for a number of events. Many of those events, a prime example being the Schools and Universities Payload challenge, are now held at Buckminster meaning there is a substantial expenditure that is no longer needed in venue hire which doesn't show in the accounts. Having a National Centre has also meant there has been opportunities to showcase our sport that were otherwise unavailable too. Income at Buckminster was quire badly affected by some atrocious weather this year with a number events cancelled. Having a National Centre also adds massively to the credibility of model aircraft flying as a sport, which h too.as great value

Not true, anyone who is a member can go if they wish, and going by the fact that most weekends during the good flying months are booked out months in advance would also seem that a lot of members are making use of the facility. Strange that you seem to be willing to travel all over the country to attend the LMA shows but can't make it to Buckminster to take part in anything!

It’s a shame you haven’t been there as it really is a splendid venue.

Almost a whole 10p a week. Oh dear!!!

Another Bowman kit has appeared on eBay back in June, so that's been added to my collection. It's a Raider 26 sports model, not one I've come across before, and one I’ve been thinking about putting together with an electric conversion at some point. Well that point has come! The pictures of this kit I originally posted in July on my other Bowman thread, but I’ll repost them here. Not wanting to trash the kit I’ve decided to get the plan scanned and copied. Word of warning when you ask your local printer for a copy, don’t forget to state you want it printed at 100%, and not scaled down to fit what ever paper size they happen to have set. Well we got it right the second time around. Having got the plan copied I’ve set about making up a new kit of parts using the original parts as templates. Having raided my stock of wood I now have complete second kit. As none of the ribs are detailed on the plan other than rib 2, I’ve also scanned the ribs on my home printer so I have a record. Interestingly the ribs in the kit are cut to just the basic shape with no cutouts for the spars so they all need finishing before they can be used. That will do for now more pictures when I start putting it together.

Is it possible to use a 60 amp esc with bec ( given to me) if the motor spec requires a 30 amp esc. My budget is low, so I could use the saved money to buy extra battery. Thanks

Thanks Mike , I have read the other post and done it. I just need to email T9 now. Cheers I have learn so much today even found a snake game on my Tx that I did not even know was their. Steve

A perfect snake install, by kc of this forum: And one of mine: note distance from horn to the point where the snake enters the fuselage, i try to make mine cross the side at 2.5" from the horn.

Hmm- a bit difficult from Aberdeen!?

Yes but there’s always room for one more...

UNI firmware is here: https://forum.alofthobbies.com/index.php?threads/uni-receiver-firmware-release-files-universal-accst-d16.3270/ The second post of that thread has a Guide (in pdf format) explaining how to flash and use it. The version of openTx (2.2.3 in your case) does not matter, the firmware for the X8R needs to match the firmware in the internal XJT module. If you have downloaded "X8R X6R FW20180322.zip", then it is likely that is the firmware you need for the X8R. If you go for the UNI firmware, this automatically detects the firmware on the internal XJT at bind time. If you ever update the firmware on the XJT module, then UNI will just need binding. Mike

I'm actually looking at this very point as we type so to speak. It's not so bad on the side that has the elevator only ..... but on the other side where there is the elevator and rudder push rods .... things look a bit congested. I think I can ove the exit slot further rear which would help but it will mean a bit of filling and covering to hide the original exit points. I'm surprised the manufacturer didn't have these more accurate in the first place. In my opinion .... they have always been too far forward within the fuselage. I may be back in the shed and on the case later tonight. I have stopped for now. Cheers Toto

In an earlier Thread a fellow RCM&E member was looking for an ID on a 70's trainer which he is trying to track one down for sale for which I spotted one in an ad on Facebook Marketplace , being an old Waterhouse & Eley Superfly which then led the idea from another fellow RCM&E member Robbie on a new Thread Topic , Hence the title of this thread... " Hidden classics spotted in ads ) So how many of you have spotted classic models in ads or posts out there and feel free to shows us your photos Heres The one I spotted of the Waterhouse & Eley Superfly https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1032019264583250?ref=search&referral_code=null&referral_story_type=post&tracking=browse_serp%3A47b87718-49c4-4ff3-8330-6a6131d2f46e

Last Thursday I made a start at putting the raider together, this is not going to be a long build! I just need to crack on with it. First item in the instructions are the wings. Pack up the leading and trailing edges, stick the ribs in place then add top spar followed by the top sheeting, easy. There are two things I don’t get with the plans, first the plan shows Rib 2 flat on the board with the packing for the L.E. & T.E. That’s ok but Rib 1 is bigger? Surely it should show have show Rib 1 flat on the board, with larger packing. The second snag is the size of Rib 1, it’s 1/4” longer than the gap between L.E & T.E. and the front of the Rib 1 is taller than the L.E. I did think should I be building a left and right panel and these rib’s are the end capping, and then stick the two panels together . But no you build it as a one piece wing, so Rib 1 was duly trimmed to fit and added last once the spar’s were fitted before adding the top sheeting. Next job is to flip it over, make up a servo bay add capping strips and sheet the bottom, before adding the ailerons.

Your wish is my command Rbbie......Thread now open

80 miles to Buckminster from here and I go as often as I can, it's a superb venue and a tribute to those who put in all the effort. Yes it might be a trek, but the camp site is great, I usually stay 2 or 3 days - roll out of bed & fly... Ask your golfing pals what they think of a £47 membership fee 🙂 We're all having to make economies, surely there's something other than your hobby where you can save your £12? Cheese Pies

In all fairness how many clubs do you know where 100% of it's Membership actually fly and use the Clubs Flying Field on a regular basis...???? In General only a certain percentage will actually fly a model and attend the Club Field & even smaller percentage attend Club Nights/Meetings and moan like hell when things/decisions get made that they don't agree with... so for bot flying or attending you could say they are also paying for the rest of us to have the privelage of everything a club has to offer

Indeed that is the case. However, there was no stopping it, the advance in technology which is already leading to a busier airspace was always going to mean there would be some impact on us. Thankfully it has been quite minimal thanks to a lot of hard work over many years.

The focus of the LMA's efforts would, quite rightly, be focused on the needs and interests of those flying large models, which are not necessarily the same as those of modellers flying typical models flown at typical club sites. Aiming to save the cost of a fish supper, over the year, doesn't sound like a good idea, if one's interests are not being addressed appropriately.

The Mass Build actually involves a "Dogfight Double " which comprises of the Fw190a and the Tempest V . The Fw190 build is well documented on the "Big Question " thread in the Warbirds section of this Forum . The second model (The Tempest V) will be built on this thread in order not to confuse everyone . The Tempest design is being finalised and once in the bag , I will start an on line build with the prototype . So that Tempest fans do not feel left out , I have attached a picture of my original glo powered version from the year 2000 . The new version will be slightly more scale , but more importantly it will be laser cut with jig tabs and supplied with a nice set of foam veneered wings . I will also be showing you all how to paint and weather the model using the most basic equipment but still achieving a finish like that shown here . We have around 25 orders so far which considering people have very little to go on is promising .

Not true, the subs in 2017 (7 years ago, or 8 if you count in 2024) were £33.00 for an adult. If they had doubled they would now be £66.00. In fact they have risen slightly less than 45% over 8 years at the new £47.00 adult rate.

Ideal day for a test flight all complete checked and ready, final motor configuration updated to an Overlander thumper 900kv throwing a 14x6 prop at just under 400 watts and an all up weight of just on 4lb. An hours trip down to my test flight site, and a further check over and all the static shots done. with no more excuses left i lined up for the first flight, good acceleration, V tail rudder working fine, up to flying speed and eased back on the elevator As the model rotated it was clear something was wrong with the ailerons so with an inch or two off the ground i chopped the power. On inspection the left hand aileron servo had stripped its gears and explained the sudden loss of feel, any further and it could have been far more serious but so frustrating as from the photo above it was so nearly there but we can't yet claim a successful first flight. On the plus side, I was able to satisfy myself re power, rudder and elevator authority. it will be a couple of weeks now before i get another chance but this is what test flights are all about and just grateful the brain was able to react so fast to something having happened so suddenly. The servos were a couple of mini Hitec mini nylon gear items, I will upgrade both i think even though the load has not been the route cause, might have got knocked in transit and the cold will not have helped I guess. Linds

Again that is my point .The BMFA can not afford to run Buckminster just for a chosen few while the rest have to pay for it

Well, the morning dawned for the maiden. A bit chilly, but at least the wind was about 4-6mph down the strip. I bit dull although the sun was threatening to show itself. Checklist for the pilot - bicycle clips .. tick, nuts and bolts checked ...tick, flappy bits all in the right sense .......tick. Off we go. https://youtu.be/41Xe18Ue2fU A short video of the maiden which I curtailed a bit due to shall be say her slightly wayward tendencies. You would have thought I would have mastered takeoff by now! Anyway I had two further flights and some attention is required. Debrief follows in the next post.