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Well, it's almost ready to test fly (again) when the weather improves - so not this weekend, I suppose. We're lucky that the Ashbourne airfield site is flyable with a tarmac runway because our 'new' site is almost submerged. So, I've gone from this : To this, with a few weeks of labour and anguish : The CoG is just about where it was originally but it weighs 15 grams more, which is disappointing as I was hoping for lighter. The fuselage is just about all new except for the firewall, cowl, spinner, wing bolt mount and undercarriage. The fin/rudder and tailplane/elevator were almost unscathed. The salvaged parts were little more than dirty, which is a benefit of the ground's being so soft and water-logged off the runway itself. I was able to salvage the covering enough to make patterns for the 'windows' but the yellow/red/orange decoration was a lost cause. To give some visibility I added some chequered covering, which looks reasonable, I think. I will spend an hour or so setting up/checking the throws but, apart from that, it's ready to go.

Whilst I moved over from IC to electric flight a few years ago I'm sure that IC will remain a viable option for those that prefer that motive power. While cars replaced horses, we still have horse riding. Railways usurped the canals but we still have an active inland waterways life. Internal combustion replaced steam but we still have traction engine rallies The world is ever changing but there is always room for those that hanker after an older technology.

Rich - there is NO POSSIBILITY that the production of methanol would be featured in a cookery programme. It is a nasty poison, ingestion and even significant skin contact leading to damage to the optic nerve, blindness, brain damage or death. There is little likelihood of methanol becoming scarce - it’s widely used in industry, as is nitromethane. Can we please drop this diversion and return to the topic of model aircraft engines.

I have finished covering the Tempest and would recommend not trying to cover the whole fuselage side in one piece . There are a lot more curves on the Tempest compared to the 190 , so its fine to take the covering in bite-size chunks . I never worry about the brown paper joints. In fact I'm proud to say that you would all be pretty horrified at my brown paper finish on this model ! The point I am making is that this model is a quick build and will earn its keep . Its no Hanger Queen . However, I hope to show you that despite a woeful lack of care and preparation before painting , we can still pull off a bit of a looker . I can see Paul cringing and Graham R wringing his paws . Have a good look at the hastily and scantily applied white . I'm particularly impressed with the all time low Ive achieved . The thing is , we are going to ............. camouflage it . Consequently , from 5 feet away , you wont see it . Good isnt it ?

Pedantry I know, but electric motors are the older technology, 1820 and 1860 (ish)

Did Primrose valley one year, had assistance & some training from the Ghost Squadron guys, John & one of the others. Did Brean Sands one year and flew off the beach. With Primrose we had our touring caravan there, but at Brean Sands we used a chalet which was really grim, dirty, poorly maintained you name it. Side story is on the way back from Brean we saved a guys life. We had a big box trailer on my Granada Estate to give more room. We're ambling along in lane 1 of the M4. Suddenly I spot a guy collapsed by an emergency phone. The phone was out of order, so we phoned 999 on my shiny new mobile. Put a coat over the guy as he was very poorly. Paramedics & plod were there pretty quick. It turned out he was diabetic & felt a hypo starting, so stopped near an emergency phone & then collapsed . The phone was out of order. His body temp was very low, it was getting dark, I reckon he'd have been toast if we hadn't seen him. It was only because we were doing 45-50MPH that I spotted him. Any faster I wouldn't have seen him.

After a protracted wait, the weather eventually decided to cooperate in providing suitable painting conditions. The cowl was given a couple of coats of 2K primer, rubbed down and then KlassKote colour applied. The colour had been mixed from other standard tins, fortunately some of the paint from the earlier restoration had been saved . The difficult bit was mixing the (Part B) catalyst so that the dried paint had the same sheen as the rest of the model - I wish I had written down what I did earlier. After 4 attempts (and 3 rubdowns) this will have to be near enough. The radiator shutters, rockers and exhaust should be easier as there isn’t a requirement for matching. Everything will be in 2K paint to resist glow fuel attack.

I've used two simple methods on the stripes so that you can choose what suits you . The first method was to just go over my pencil lines with a black sharpie pen , then simply paint up to the line . Straight forward really . If you are feeling confident in your masking tape (green Frog tape is very good ) , you can try a different approach by masking off the white areas and then brushing black quickly over the lot . Either method works . The first method might suit those of a more nervous disposition .

I used a retractable one,,

Zeee Power https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zeee-4000mAh-Battery-Airplane-Helicopter/dp/B089YNLCVG

HI, I posting the reply I received from Peter Denison on the questions I had for him on his CM plans Swordfish build. Peter also sent these photos. So the ailerons work fine . I glassed the front sheeted Balsa part of the fuse and used Solartex for the rest then painted . 8. Any improvements you would suggest? Yes cutting back on the dihedral as helped as it’s not a glider is it ! It’s a bit overweight but it flies as slow as i want it to with no problems ,though I don’t fly it if the wind get up , as I have other models for that 🙂 It’s an interesting model to make am sure you will enjoy it . Keep in touch Ken if you have any other questions no problem , I will send over some building photo's. Kind Regards Pete .

Yeah I came close to it but in the end thought I’d try not to over complicate it for myself! Looks good with a retract though.

Spent a lifetime designing methanol production plants, they typically produce 3,000 to 6,000 tonnes per day, but the minimum order quantity needs a small tanker (ship tanker not lorry tanker) to collect it with if you order direct.

Looking at the plan it was a castoring tail wheel, but I’d rather it was steerable… there’s not much room at the back but a I was able to hook the tail wheel to the rudder pushrod.

Bad luck Toto but, to be fair the forecast for this weekend is pretty grim anyway - it's been snowing and raining here all day and the winds and rain forecast for the weekend makes any flying unlikely.

Doesn't the issue of IC engines continuing to be available to our hobby simply rest upon somebody's motivation to manufacture them? Apologies for stating the obvious. The motivation? A viable, growing market to sell the products to in quantity, and at a margin that makes the whole venture worthwhile and profitable. A mixed bunch of products from the throw away varienty (well almost) through the mid ranges and than the top of the market complex products for the aspiring types. We used to have that twenty or thirty plus years ago, but no more. Clearly, the Chinese manufacturers who really did a wonderful job of producing a wide range of affordable and perfectly good engines had their motivation drained from them. The likes of ASP, SC and a few other smaller brands, must have sold millions of engines to a world wide audience, but dropped them like a hot brick and in short order. I wonder what those firms are doing now - the tooling investment must have been vast to produce such a huge range of engines even with the much reduced cost of Asian manufacturing. OS and Saito must be facing a similar problem - their range is a shadow of its former self and the cost of their products is much increased. As far as I'm aware the Indian manufacturers don't seem to be interested in filling the void. They're not fools, they know the sales are just are no longer there in the quantities needed. The use of IC will continue without a problem in our hobby for quite a few years yet - mainly driven by older modellers recycling older engines and bringing old shed stock back into use, I suspect - but when age etc finally does catch up.....then what? Does it really matter anyway? Enjoy it while you can.

Carbon tetrachloride, now that is a dangerous stuff. Used mainly in small pump action fire extinguishers found in cars and lorriesof the day. Its use was banned in these extinguishes due to it releasing phosgene and free carbon if it hit red heat metal . We were taught this in the Fire Brigade and to be very careful with its use on small car fires. It was easily obtainable and used as you say for degreasing. Plating companies used tanks of it to degrease bits . We even used it to thin paint for spraying ! Then it was discovered how dangerous it was and caused liver disease .

Don't worry about the boys, there too busy playing with their dollies to care😝

Glue looked dry-ish so decided to take a look. Very excited about this - looks promising. Very rigid and only 160g - pretty good!

Excuse me chaps, but aren't we supposed to be talking about model aeroplanes and their propulsion methods ?

The very limited flying over the winter means I need to get in some practise with EDFs as I hope to get the rather "extreme" Douglas X-3 flying. The better my flying skills are the less likely it will might not get any more damaged that it already has been. I decided to fly some of my EDFs that have spent most of last year "hanging on the wall", quite literally. First was the 50mm EDF DH "Swiss" Venom although on this occasion it was flown without the tip tanks. 44" span, it is a Depron job and light at 520g but with a 1300mAh 4s and a clean airframe it is no slouch. Those twin booms are delicate so a belly landing needs concentration and accuracy. Next calm day it was the exact opposite. The Depron Douglas Skray . 36" span and a similar weight to the Venom but with over twice the wing area. A gentle slow flyer but like all delta the drag rises rapidly in any sort of manoeuvre. Flown bank and yank nose drop in a turn is pronounced. Pull too many g and it almost stops flying! Next was the Hawker Hunter F6. 50 mm EDF 33" span and made entirely from 5mm XPS sheet (no balsa or carbon!). At 385g a bit heavier than the Venom although not quite as fast but flies very nicely. Decorated as a Black Arrow of 111 squadron who managed to loop 22 of them together in formation. Today late on (17:20) the weather improved considerably so it was the turn of the P1052 better known as the prototype swept wing Sea Hawk, Still a "portly" Sea Hawk fuselage with a modest power 55mm EDF. Like the Hunter made entirely from 5mm XPS sheet This was my second Hawker, the first was a Sea Hawk. I made a better job of the complex bifurcated inlet and exhaust duct so it had more thrust from just a 1500mAh 3s. Two were built. One still exists at IWM Cosford. The other was modified with a bit more thrust but broke up trying to go supersonic in a dive. The test pilot did not survive. Hopefully at the next calm day I will be able to try the Douglas X-3, again and be a bit better prepared to not break it.

250g is not bad at all for such a big span and chord wing.

Richard took the same electrical course in wiring as me. It was held in a spaghetti factory

See....

They dont need to be that brilliant , but please get them straight , otherwise you will hate it . I was a little more careful on the top surface ! The fuselage is masked on the sides first , then across the top and bottom so that the stripes look straight from above . You can see that with a full set of stripes , there isnt that much of the plane left to paint ! The black canopy is only for temporary amusement . This kind of camo is quite straight forward and a useful lesson for the future . The basic premise is that the light paint should be applied first . So its on with the white . If we didnt have decals ( we do ) we would also put white circles where the roundels would be . Yellow rings are also an issue , so we might provide a white base for them too. The big mistake some people do is paint the plane green and grey , then try to paint pale coloured squadron codes on top . Ten coats and three weeks later and they are still cursing .

BTW , that Pool table was the wifes Christmas present . Next year , she's getting a Jet Ski ... I like doing the full invasion striped British paint job , especially after the very fluid style of the mottled German camo , as it makes a nice change . Obviously I have brushed (you can see that !) some white valspar emulsion on . Let it dry then mark on where the stripes will go . They will be on the plan to help you . Its dead easy as they are two inched wide so 5x2" equals a nice simple section 10" long . Main thing is to keep them straight . So mark the centre line of the whole wing then do parallel lines from that . I pencil mark them first . For the fuselage you need a line running along the length parallel to the top of the fuselage sides . Then with a piece of square card you can draw vertical lines every two inches .

You're doing a grand job Chris - I particularly like the tail structure. 👍

I have an Ender 3 V2 and it's cheap & cheerful. Not as fast as some printers out there but spares and upgrades are easy to source and the popularity of the printer means you can easily get help if you get stuck. There is a learning curve to owning and using a 3D printer. so. it pays not to buy one that only 4 people in Myanmar have bought. KB

So my postie did manage a delivery albeit on Thursday. I have now built the first one from my first batch of PCB's for the ESP32C3 super mini ( I always find revisions to make after pressing the buy button!) It all works ok ...... eventually. It took a day of pis**** messing about and eventually fixed a problem with SoftwareSerial not working when the RXPin is set to pin 2 as per my boards, I think it has something to do with pin 2 being the hardware UART2 RX pin and software serial simply refused to recognise the incoming packets on pin 2. The workaround was to not use software serial and use hardware Serial1 instead on pins 2 and 3 - problem solved. After a couple more tweaks on the sketch I am happy it all works as intended. Everything is here

The spar felt very stiff and the intention was that this takes the bending loads. It feels easily capable of that. The hope was that the skin will add the torsional stiffness - and it does feel pretty resistant to twisting. With the skin glued onto the other side it now weighs 250g - so that’s 500g for a 1.7m span wing before servos are added etc. That seems pretty good to me?

Hi Leccy, I had sort of resigned myself to it anyway but you know ....... hope and all that.... . Last weekend was just too good to stop me from hoping for a continuation of the same. Strike whilst the iron is hot and all that. I have the fire in my belly now that I have had a little taste of real progress and the Cub is proving to be a good reliable flyer. Can't wait to get back out and start building more on consistency. I'll need to stock up on incontinence pads ...... its all getting too much. Have a great weekend Toto

Ours are fine and it is only a potential risk, Still didn't stop us getting the $120 refund, a new bed is on the way and along with the new price of a mini, its nearly free.

Since Bamboo Labs hit the market it has slaughtered the price of second hand Prusas' Market so some good deals on Ebay for these, We have a mixture of Bamboo printers here working night and day and the Mk 3 Prusas' generally dont get used much now, They are not as sturdy as a Prusa but the prints generally work time after time, AS far as plug and play Bamboo are the closest you will get.

I blame their trainer, their spoilt and lack discipline.

HRB have performed splendidly in my, and clubmates' EDFs. However, I bought one recently which was quite unbalanced when received - not had a chance to test it yet, so the jury's out on it.

Hi Simon, Not an authority on anything RC after returning and finding electrickery powered planes, what's that all about! After trying a few I'm a HRB fan and have quite a few now. Lost a model in a bramble jungle and recovered it two weeks later, HRB on zero power, "safely" jump started it with a matching battery on storage level, few minutes later its on 9%, onto the charger at 0.1A until it timed out then gently fully charged. Used it a few times now works perfectly charges to 100% with totally even cells! in fact better than a couple of others. 2nd choice when unavailable is Zeeeeeeeee power, been perfectly good. May be too many eeee's. I have been buying from the HRB store, they tend to ask what connector is required as do the Zeeeee guys. Also all those Ukrainian drone operators cant be wrong if you've seen some images. Also have a couple of 6S Turnigy Graphene, bit heavier and bulkier, all good but wouldnt spend the extra money again.

well done Jim. Bas

This is what I like about Foam Board/ depron . You can just try something with very little outlay and if you get bits wrong , just chop them out . I'm very interested to see how this turns out LM .

Or use less throttle stick?

Why not just set the throttle arm to give 80 % power.

Much easier than it looks. If you were to go Monday to Friday you would be able to fly most days. Contact Manny to choose the best possible dates.

Stuart, if its built with PVA glue, or possibly even cyano, chuck it in the bath overnight and it will re-kit itself. I had one just as you describe, and once all the bits were separated I was able to scrape the glue off, tidy up the tabs, holes and edges and it all went togeher as Precedent intended without a gap to be seen. One tip. If you are using the supplied noseleg clamps, put some spacers, either washers or bits of lemonade or milk bottle under the saddle clamp pads. Otherwise they are pre-stressed and will break on the first 'firm' landing.

Evening all, An early reminder to all, as it's another race weekend with all the sessions starting at 'silly o'clock' in the morning, UK-time. So, even though there's still over 6 hours until P1 starts; Don't forget your predictions! Make them now, you can always change them later after seeing how the practice sessions work out. P1 is at 03:30 on Friday morning, with P2 at 07:00 P3 is at 03:30 on Saturday morning with qualifying following at 07:00 Sunday's race starts at 06:00 Now, go and get those predictions done!

A bit more EDF practise today with the Depron North American XB70 Now very old for foam. Built in 2014 and last flown in August 2022. 70mm EDF exhausting through 6 scale nozzles which is not the most efficient set up but it works well enough. Just 3 minutes is all I got from its 2200mAh 3s but belly landed no problem. After 10 years it is now a bit "tatty". Needs some TLC.

I wonder if the talk of the next model in the series has folks thinking about skipping the Tempest, just a thought?

I thought I’d have a rest for a while from the latest project and get some outstanding jobs done on previously completed models requiring some TLC. As this is a DB SE5 thread that has gone quiet, I thought it would be a suitable place for some refurbishment coverage. Last summer, and a first for me, I had the misfortune to have the bearing housing of a Laser 200v part company with the crankcase. During the process the cowl was knocked off, the model landed without further damage. The housing, complete with prop, was found in the wheat field straight away by an eagle-eyed club member – how’s that for luck, but the cowl wasn’t found for a week and in the meantime had suffered being chewed up a bit by a harvester. Slightly disappointing as the model had been recovered and painted only eighteen months before. Too much damage had been done to repair so a new cowl needed making, though it’s taken me until now to get round to it. The original plan for the model has long been lost but it was a quick job to measure the fuselage and come up with the basic formers. The original cowl is simply 4 pieces of 1/8” ply, a few strips of ½ x ¼ and ¼ x ¼ balsa, covered by one piece of 1/64 ply. That’s the simple bit, the more complicated part is forming some radiator shutters and a decent inlet path for cooling the vee engine. However, it’s all doable and, once the engine has had the magic wand of Jon Harper passed over it, will be flyable again. The pressing need is to make more storage room if the master plan of aircraft to be built is to be continued. The short term plan is to sell the SE5. As a model it’s a joy to fly but because of the rigging, it either takes a while to prepare at the field, or if left rigged, precludes taking anything else and takes up even more room in the shed. Either way it’s got to find a new home this year but I doubt anyone would want it with a damaged front end. The damaged cowl caused by the fleeing bearing housing. Damage to the fuselage was confined to the radiator shutters A few hours work and the new cowl is taking shape The easy bit done, now onto building up the front end. The exhaust manifolds can be reused This rocker cover survived, the other was in a mess The rockers were moulded ABS, as a spare part from DB they are £18 - I think some simple ones made from glass cloth shouldn't be too difficult. Similarly there is a radiator kit at £45 but I'll remake the shutters the same way as shown above. I've still got the rest of the packet of mesh I can lay my hands on - life is not all bad! Hopefully we will get back to something like this.