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Servos typically rotate +/- 60 degrees for full stick throw. For the rotation from 0 to 10 degrees, the linear movement is about 17% of the radius while for the rotation from 50 to 60 degrees the linear movement is only 10% of the radius. This actually results in (approximate) negative exponential. So if you use some exponential you compensate the servo rotation. The rotation of the control horn on the aerodynamic surface will similarly provide some positive exponential, although the amount of rotation of the surface is generally significantly less than 60 degrees, so you still have some negative exponential in the geometry. I just did a test on erskyTx and I need about 40% expo set so the linear output of the servo is the same for the first 10 degrees of rotation and the last 10 degrees of rotation. Mike

Just got back from the field and from trying out Dolly 2:

Extinct

An underside view of what is virtually the complete airframe showing the exhaust fairing and the substantial battery hatch. All the leads run into the battery hatch. The 1300mAh 4s will be paced right up against the front bulkhead for CofG reasons. There will also be a Lemon 'gyro' Rx to go in so a suitable platform will have to be built for it. And all out of Depron of course!

Late one night, a burglar broke into a house he thought was empty. He tiptoed through the living room but suddenly he froze in his tracks when he heard a loud voice say: "Jesus is watching you!" Silence returned to the house, so the burglar crept forward again. "Jesus is watching you," the voice boomed again. The burglar stopped dead again. He was frightened. Frantically, he looked all around. In a dark corner, he spotted a bird cage and in the cage was a parrot. He asked the parrot: "Was that you who said Jesus is watching me?" "Yes", said the parrot. The burglar breathed a sigh of relief, and asked the parrot: "What's your name?" "Moses," said the bird. "That's a dumb name for a parrot," sneered the burglar. "What idiot named you Moses?" The parrot said, "The same idiot who named the Rottweiler Jesus."

Came home today to find my wife still on eBay. . . Think I will have to lower the starting price.

Yes, today was a very welcome dry interval. There were 6 of us at the field. A club mate flew his E-flite Draco. I'd not seen one before, it's an impressive beast and flies well, but then so it should for the money (£600+ new, although he got his secondhand for £300). A sun halo marked our departure.

Nice today with little wind with low pressure centred over the UK and not that cold either. Filed impossibly muddy so flying operations restricted to a very small part of the field. Not wishing to risk anything more delicate I flew to heavily repaired Big Dragon pusher. All the blue bits are replacement printed parts. The red are original. Easy to fly so just over ten minutes of climbing and gliding including some simple aerobatics just to get stick time in. Battery capacity would have allowed to go on for quite a bit longer. The interesting bit is that although the printed fuselage was so severely damaged in a crash the far more delicate Depron wing structure was completely undamaged thanks to it being rubber band retained and free to slide forward so slipping the bands off the forward hook.

Apply it just as you would for wax furniture or car polish. I use an old bit of towel which remains in the tin. Its absolutely saturated with wax by now but that's probably an advantage. Apply liberally, let it dry for a few minutes then buff to a shine..........then repeat and repeat!

When I was a teen repairing TVs, one of our customers had a Mynah bird. Its cage was behind the door where the TV was, so I didn't see it when I went in, but I certainly heard it when it wolf whistled very loudly and realistically. I thought my fantasy of having an attractive, bored housewife lusting after a young lad had come true (it never did!). The bird had a range of incredibly realistic phrases, much better than any parrot I've heard.

I would suggest starting off with it at 80mm and then see how it feels.

Bit more done: Added some dials to the instrument panel. Fitted the nose block and sheeting to the underside. My method of trimming the cowl. I took advantage of some rare dry weather this afternoon and did a bit of sanding outdoors. More later...

Glad you mentioned that, I’ve now removed 2/3rds of the weight which moves the CG back to 90 mm back from F2 but I think I can remove all of the weight which will move it back to approximately 100mm back.

Well there was me thinking done!! Made my predictions weeks ago, even before testing. And yep you got it. Forgot to select my team!!!

This time you have made a very Jolly Dolly ! In fact a Jolly Jolly Dolly !

Hi Bit more work on Sabre. Just need to sort bending of the tail wires and complete and refine the fairing shapes etc. Shouldn’t be long before move on to glassing fuselage. mike PS Also need to sort tail pioe 😂

In total it took me 9 hours to make but the ease of setting up and surcurity of holding the crankshaft more than make up the expenditure of time. One of three to be made for Westbury Atoms Minors

Why is it that you always get a puncture in the tyre with the most tread remaining and not the one that's almost bald?

Correct - and it was flagged to the site owner early this morning.

Congrats top 3.

We never had these problems in the good old days I don't have these problems with other forums now. Someone must be responsible for today's problems maybe they could publish a timetable about when the forum will be up or down please And then get it fixed for ever.

It’s sometimes worth getting a second opinion on whether a tyre can be repaired. I had a screw in a tyre fairly near to the side of the tread a few years ago. I took the car to a local tyre dealer, where the chap said “Ooh no mate, too near the side wall. We’ll order you a new tyre, that’ll be £130 please.”. However I did some research, and it seems British Standard BS AU159 specifies how near to the edge you can go, and a chart is available to download and print. Armed with this chart in case I needed it, I went to another tyre place I know, where the chap looked at the tyre and said “Yes mate, we can repair that, that’ll be £15 please.”. £115 saved, and I drove around on the tyre for several years afterwards with no problem. (Internet photo)

Hi Ken, Yeah, that's what I did as it saves the plans a bit. Cliff's model looks great - nice scheme! I wonder how many Swordfish have been built from his plans? I was down at the Navy Wings hangar at Yeovilton a few years ago to look at the full size and spotted a model of one up on top of a container but I could get to it unfortunately. I served there as a young air mechanic in the early 70s and the historic flight's hangar was just a 100mts from ours and I didn't pay that much attention to the old 'String Bag' but when they wheeled the Sea Fury out everyone downed tools for the start up and subsequent flying display. Now 50 years on I can appreciate what an amazing aircraft the Swordfish is and what it achieved in the hands of true heroes. Enjoy the Tempest build but save some balsa for the Swordfish. The sun is out so I'm off flying now. Cheer. Martin.

Same here Brian, I’ve reported it on the RCM&E FB page.

I had the same error message yesterday evening. Site was reluctant to start up a couple of hours ago too.

The Durafly Komet is likely to be a fine example of inappropriate use of expo. A few years ago, I had a bit of a break from flying mine and the next time I got it out, seemed to have unusual difficulty getting it airborne. Every take off run ended up in divergent yaw oscillations to the point where I either managed to get it in the air at some random point or took it home for repairs. It got to be a bit of a club joke - although my other flying seemed unaffected, I seemed incapable of flying this model. Once in the air, it behaved perfectly with benign flying characteristics. I went through the ATV and expo experiments with no improvement in the take off run until the day the penny dropped and I started to wonder whether I’d remembered the battery position correctly from before the break. A few neurons fired in sync and I moved the battery forward a significant amount to a position which seemed to ring a bell. I lined it up and it tracked perfectly, easing into the air like a basic trainer. Many subsequent flights have been uneventful - crosswinds hold no terrors and mid take off run heading corrections can be made with ease. The mass of the battery in relation to the undercarriage position seems to be the key here. So perhaps these experienced flyers in your videos might like to try a C of G adjustment rather than messing about with expo?

Evening all! With the Channel 4 highlights programme drawing to a close, it's time to take a look at our league table after today's season-opening race; Pos League Rank Team Manager Pts 1 1 0 Team Charles Picd Charles Pic 168 2 2 0 DMFC Racing Team Simon Webb 158 3 3 0 GASTON Formula Chris McG 142 4 4 0 Iqonic racing iqon 135 5 5 0 PSS Power Flyer 133 6 6 0 Hidden Cucumber fat brownie 130 7 7 0 Revers Racing Pete B 128 = 8 0 Pitts Specials john stones 128 9 9 0 Essex Racing Tony Clark 123 = 10 0 Mannschaft Carl Brotherton 123 11 11 0 The JP Specials johnpflyrc 121 12 12 0 teewrex John Tee 116 13 13 0 LetsGoTotoLetsGo GrumpyGnome 109 14 14 0 Hans Brake Zoonie 105 15 15 0 Torque of the devil Stu 103 16 16 0 Norfolk Flyers Kevin Fairgrieve 20 Taking top spot today with an impressive 168 points is Charles. 10 points adrift in second today is Simon. And our podium today is completed by Chris, taking third with 142 points. Well done to today's top three! Behind the top 3 there's a cluster of us on 135 to 121 points before a slight gap and four more scoring 116 to 103. I can only assume Kev didn't manage to pick a team in time for today's race... 😕 Next up, in a week's time, is Saudi Arabia. And again, we're a day ahead of normality with Qualifying at 5pm (UK-time) on Friday, and the race at 5pm on Saturday.

After another 24 hours, the second half of the cowl has been released from the plug and the excess from the edges removed. The next job is to bolt the two pieces together and start the waxing process again in preparation for the first rocker cover lay-up.

Started my crank/crank pin turning this afternoon. Your Vee block gave me the inspiration, and it has worked well, albeit nowhere near the elegance, but I'm working with limited facilities (my best excuse).

I'm one of Jons 5p brigade no rates, max throws and shed loads of expo. Works for me, I like the fact I can do a tight ground touching bunt with plenty of throw to get out of trouble then into smooth slow rolls without flicking multiple switches.

A shame that I live in France, I would love the H-300 and my first helicopter, the Lark.

This happened to me last year with my Hangar 9 bf-109, servo failed mid roll. Interesting getting it back down I didn't have a higher rate, I do now! thankfully was not quite at full deflection so had just enough to keep it level and rely on the rudder and got it down safe.

Terrible examples to others. The ladder should be at an angle of 4:1 and neither is wearing a safety helmet.

Slowly moving forward. The full span aileron are installed and are also set to act as flaperons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_4GFRgegXg Two positions on a 3 position switch. The object is to improve lift for launching rather than to slow sown for landing. At the moment it looks like the X-3 will weigh about 16 oz. it has a wing area of 1.5 sqft giving a wing loading of 11oz/sqft. My heaviest EDF, a Hunter F6, which uses exactly the same fan has a wing loading of 8.24 oz/sqft. It hand launches fairly easily. My biggest concern is the loss of thrust from the bifurcated exhaust. it raising the question as to whether it will be able to accelerate to a flying speed before it reaches the ground. It will be interesting to find out!

I'm a bit worried they are daily updates, but this project is keeping my tinkering spirit alive every day almost and getting obsessive much as my Lola build was. Made some significant progress this afternoon in as much as actually finishing the parts so i can move on to the Big Challenges ahead. Silver brazed the inlet stub to the cylinder that certainly blackened it! That was followed by soft soldering the transfer porting cover to the cylinder as well, and that added to the scruffy look.... I last silver brazed/soldered back at school for my GCSE in metalwork which I got a distinction in (and Art). Those were the days. The school was a bit off-the-wall in those days (60's) and there was an after school Club for all subjects, so I did metalwork where the game was to do anything outside of the curriculum, so we cast metal (!), brazed, and cut and made nice things. I really wanted to be a jeweler as a career, but my father was not so sure (he was an architect) so i did a heavy engineering apprenticeship instead. The crank case is all done, cylinder studs in and loctited and it all screws together! Amazing for me and my skill base. A few pics as ever, but I'm getting excited. 73T 91

Not Winter in South Africa, we are having a very hot summer around 30 during the day, some have been around 35 and even hot at night! My son and I visited a local club on Saturday and had some good flying. Both scratch built aircraft.

Most likely you will need to set the trim or throttle end point down a bit and then the ESC will arm. Its a safety feature to stop the ESC arming and starting on the fly with the motor rotating! Its just Speky seem to output a slightly higher throttle setting compared with other manufacturers. Just make sure the prop is off in case it springs to life unexpectedly. PS you can check the TX in monitor mode that the throttle output is working with the RX unpowered first

The Starfighter was a beneficiary from the X3 project. I have read that input from the project influenced the out line design in addition to more technical aspects (below skin deep). I still have hope with respect to my own X3, in respect to the Starfighter, info on methods of construction and propulsion would be very, very interesting.

With the wing and nose in place the rear end now looks quite Stiletto(ish). But include the nose and it doesn't! The wing still has the flaps and ailerons to be added before they show their full? area. Given how low set the wing is the ailerons will have to have top side horns. Still thinking about how best to hand launch it as the fuselage is too wide to hold directly.

P.S. It's a real photo !!!

I'm sure somebody will phone me to let me know I am remembered in his will. 😂

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Quick dash to the field , despite blustery conditions .. result !! A little more nose weight for the second flight .. then dialled in !!🥳

Hi Steve, I missed seeing your April posts. The answer to your question about which model I am launching is its a Veron Cardinal modified for 2ch radio and powered by an original Mills P75 that's older than me. Just the other day someone left a pile of old mags at the field club house and there was the issue about the Bob Wright Morane still with plan still attached. Gave it to a mate who is interested in small scale models. Cheers, John.