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Wanted to keep his feet dry. Enjoy.. 647024-35609f86a82966019b8fa83d94adf051.mp4

My other top tip is lock the tailwheel . Unless you go down the route of differential throttles like Ron , there is not enough gain involved to make it steerable . The worst option is fully castoring . This is only my opinion , but I cant see why castoring tail wheels is a good idea on any tail dragger model . When you think about the model , sitting there , ready to take off , there are no forces acting on it . As soon as you open the throttle it will be effected by torque and want to swing left . The fixed and moving flying surfaces have no airflow over them to counteract this force so the only way to negate the swing is a fixed tailwheel on a long moment arm (the fuselage ) . At what point would you guess the rudder actually has enough air flowing over it to apply an equalising force ? 10 mph ? 15mph ? Fair to assume you would have to be perhaps, at least 20 feet from the start point . Of course the prop thrust will help , but that also depends on tail plain height and the blanking effect of the main wing . The famous test pilot , Eric Brown , said of the Me110 , that its fins and rudders were blanked when the tail was down and the only way to stop a swing was differential braking. The Mosquito and Me109 also relied on brakes to stay straight . We don't have brakes . Fit a stabiliser some may say . But that needs an effective rudder to correct the swing . Back to square one . Funny enough , the models that are prone to nosing over are more likely to run straight than those that have a more forward location of their main gear . That is because the further the centre of rotation is from the C of G the , the more it will "squirrel " about . Think Fokker Triplane . Sopwith Camel . So for most you , just lock the tail wheel and forget it . Light , simple . Ok so you may have to get the model after a landing but way better than a massive take off swing that frightens your buddies and may end in a cart wheel . Like I say , just my thoughts .

I do like a Mustang. There are so many different versions , you could almost have half a dozen ! Great opportunity to play around with different finishes too .

A few little bits and pieces, but its all progress, tailplane halves butt jointed and glassed over the join. Before joining the two wing panels I made up the servo boxes in each and fitted the control horn mountings into the ailerons. Wing panels came ready to join with correct angle at the root, so packed up at the centre by the specified 6.5mm, added epoxy, weighted and clamped; centre section will be glassed once dry.

Managed to update the receiver using the Painless 360 video, I was lucky that I kept the s port lead and only needed to reverse the + & - wires . Bound now to the XJT module, so I have learned something new today. Thanks for all the help and suggestions. Henry

I can confirm UNI firmware is available for the G-RX8. Using the XJT is a very good idea for FrSky protocols, rather than the MPM. All Tx modules have a "Unique ID", that is used when binding so that the bound Rx only responds to that Tx module. FrSky modules have a "Unique ID" that is allocated by FrSky, so all FrSky modules are unique. The MPM has a "Unique ID" (for FrSky protocols) that is derived from an ID in the processor. So, while this ID is probably different from the ID of other MPMs, it is NOT guaranteed to be different from official FrSky IDs. This means that if you use a FrSky protocol on the MPM and operate at the same time as a user of a FrSky module, it is possible both will have the same ID. Archer Plus receivers only work with the V2 version of ACCST. Mike

When I have glued servos in, I wrap them in paper masking tape first which is less substantial than heat shrink and easier to remove.

Not really. As Eric pointed out, going to a 6s1p battery would not suit the supplied motors and props and you would need to come down to much smaller pros and be carrying lots of undesirable battery weight. Those 6s1p batteries are going to be significantly more expensive than the smaller capacity 4s1p 3300mah packs. Richard's post is spot on - he's recommended an optimised power train for the model and diverting too far from that will make things unnecessarily more complex and with reduced chances of smooth operation.

Couldn't agree more 😉

But before I start any modifications I’ll tackle another “foamie” problem! Getting a foam model to the field, especially with a 2 metre wing span, is always fraught with danger, they get damaged so easily. Three boxes, one to provide clearance for the fin and the other two (one of which fits inside the other) cut in half and attached to the original box make a good transport / storage box. I’ve used black “Gaffer Tape” to cover the lid halves and reinforce the edges. Various pieces of packing foam hold all the parts in place.

With the two sides joined it is now time for the fuselage jig. All of the cross members have been made and test fitted. As usual setting up the jig took longer than the rest of the process. Next is glue time again. Steve

picture Leccy ? they were at Bentwaters I believe for a bit ? Ive flown down that runway in my pals RV .

I toyed with the idea of doing the P51 from Top Gun: Maverick...

Leading edge balsa strip installed after the fiddly 1/16th square strips to support the top and bottom covering were mounted on the spruce leading edge spar. It all looks pretty straight to my eye, with no obvious twist, so now to lock it down and complete the D profile of the wing.

I think driving games would be better tbh

Don’t glue 9g servos into the wings. Instead of gluing 9g servos into wings due to the limited depth of the recess, try using one of these servo mount designs which give free access to the servo. There are two types, one in which the frame is fixed down into the recess and the other which incorporates a servo cover and is fixed to the wing surface. These are 3d printed designs which are freely available on Thingiverse and only cost a few pence to make. Here are the Thingiverse links for the files and full details. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6859356 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6721166

Bending piano wire around too sharp a radius will inevitably cause it to break.

With our Flying field being a bit muddy over the winter period. Thought I needed a good old winter model. I love Cubs so I invested in the FMS 1700.PA Supercub .This model is fantastic what a flyer .It has the characteristics of the good old Cub and with the large wheels it will almost take of in a ploughed field. Surprisingly it is quite aerobatic but I am not in to that I just like to fly.it like a cub should be flown .The model is well made ,easy to assembly and fly very slow. I love it .Well done FMS another quality model .I can fully recommend it .I see they do a smaller PA18 at 1300mm. I would suspect that would be a good flyer to and would make a good trainer aircraft 👌👌👍

If you have not done so already give the rudder assembly a close inspection Leccy. I was flying my FMS SuperEZ on snow with floats last week. I found a recessed grub screw which when removed enabled the bottom portion of the rudder mechanism to be removed. I've not seen the PA-18 floats but it is possible that it has a similar design.

Hello Murat Feel free I've not copyrighted it. Yet! Grahame

Don't bother heating up piano wire- just get a wire bender for 8SWG wire and bend cold.

I keep my kids on the books purely for the insurance. A foamy chuck glider through a neighbours green house (or another club members car window/expensive model at the field) is as covered for them, as any damage us "real" flyers might cause.

Interesting, I normally use heat shrink tubing, and glue them in, cut the heat shrink to get the servo out, or glue them to the wing hatch.

Back on the subject of blooming, there is a product you can get from Halfords called leveller spray which is just a can of high quality thinners, the purpose of which it to level out any orange peel effect of sprayed paint. It just redissolves the surface of the newly sprayed paint to allow it to relax to a more smooth finish. This smells just like the "amyl acetate" that Christopher describes and it may well be worth keeping a can of it about the workshop.

Hi . Piano wire is not what it used to be and varies greatly . Some are lucky and get proper Piano wire that bends and is springy. There is probably a lot made from Chineseium and its brittle . Once heated to cherry red it often becomes brittle . Chris wolfes post re heating ,bending and re-tempering works on proper piano wire if you can get it but some stuff is just rubbish . Good luck .

When it comes to fliers, we (BMFA Club fliers) are significantly in the minority, so it makes perfect sense to skew the questions towards environments other than those we commonly use......

Mostly agree with you, but a lot of the questions do have a drone flavour. For example some refer to flying when out and about, trips in the country, hiking, mountain-biking. One mentions flying whilst cycling using a 'follow me' function. Other talking about being out with friends and using your drone to take selfies. Other talk about flying over festivals, and taking videos of properties and people. Now I agree that you could do this with a fixed-wing aircraft but very unlikely and would be very much the minority. Nor do the scenarios reflect the sort of environments most of us fly in, in a remote field at a BMFA registered club. Actually, I'd go as far as using follow me on a fixed wing whilst cycling would be extremely dangerous. Having said that, I don't have any issue with the questions, they are generally sensible and the correct answers mostly obvious. And if anyone is really bothered by the questions a quick Google will find the questions and answers before you attempt the test. And remember you can do the test as many times as you want.

For wetting tissue over Doculam, a re-purposed scent sprayer works nicely to locally spritz the already dampened tissue with water if it shows signs of drying out. I can still purchase amyl acetate here in Australia, it smells like bananas and just a light brushful should remove all blushing, otherwise just give another coat of dope but mix in about 50% dope thinners.

David, after heating the piano wire bend area to 'cherry red' and letting it air cool it should bend easily but is no longer springy. Next step is to heat it to cherry red and dunk it in water, now it is very hard and brittle. Last step is to gently heat the bends to a dark blue colour to temper the piano wire. It won't be as precise as the original manufacturer's temperature controlled environment but it's not too bad Here is a guide that works well for me Music Wire Heat Treating.pdf

You might have to get a bit creative, or accepting of something not absolutely perfectly proportioned. Something for the Vailly Typhoon could presumably be made to work, e.g. http://www.sierragiant.com/prod11.html or from Electron, such as the ER40 range. Noting the Sierra suggests 96°, as did Richard in the previous thread to be scale. The Tony Nijhuis Typhoon (a size smaller than yours) uses 90° and no one has ever commented to me that they are not scale, but i'm also not entering it in competitions. JP Hobby has a bunch of options, you might make something work from their range. There is quite a range of retracts on Aliexpress, (and presumably similar sites such as Ebay, Temu etc). I run some of these in different models. One bit of advice i can give, is retracts are the weak link. So go the biggest you can get in your plane. Retracts take a beating, so if can by any means get a size/weight range above what you "should" need, then do that.

Unless you get your piano wire from a known supplier - like the K&B Metals stand - there is a risk that the currently available piano wire is indeed very different to that you used in the past. It is very often brittle and can break easily if you look sideways at it,

Erfolg If the inlet has the same area as the Fan Swept Area I would agree the maximum velocity the fan can generate is ultimately restricted. However in my XF108 the inlet and all the ducting to the fan is 1.2 times the fan gross area or 1.4 times the true Fan Swept Area. With this configuration the fan can increase the exhaust velocity by at least 1..4 or even more at the 90% FSA nozzle before the inlet is creating any velocity restriction. In this case a cheat hole has very little benefit. I dd agree that if the inlet & duct is below this sort dimension a cheat hole will reduce the inlet choke effect and improve the EDF performance. It one reason I use relatively small EDFs and light airframes so that true scale inlets and exhausts are big enough.

This is a really bad design, so just fit a normal one and be done with it. you dont want burning hot contaminated oil being blasted into your crankcase. It is a really bad idea and theres a reason noone has used this setup on any other engine.

I agree with Phillip, calibrate each one separately before linking them up in a plane. However if you are using different receiver channels for each speed control, then you can still calibrate each one individually via each channel.

I doubt it would matter but personally I would do them one at a time just so that I made sure I heard the confirmtory beep for each one.

A step forward as the Supercub is assembled as I target my first flight of the year for this weekend. Tomorrow it's charge batteries, calibrate ESC and hopefully get the receiver programmed etc. There are still a couple of variables outwith my control ..... weather .... as always being one of them and my mentors availability being another but I believe he should be OK. Dying to get the Supercub back in the air and get my hand back in. The intension ..... all things falling into place ..... is to make a full scale assault on my attempt to get A cert ready and get myself over the line as early in the year as possible. Then the fun begins. So many possibilities going forward. Toto

For anyone other than a real "electric expert " , follow my lead . 4s 3300 packs or similar , 600kv motors . remember , the correct spinners and props provided have been matched to a certain rev range which the above mentioned will provide . My motors also have the central threaded hole to retain the spinner dome with . So if you go "off piste" you are like to run into all the issues I have already discovered and solved for you .

Love it! I too have looked at the Robbe offering and see a lot of value in the product. The Robbe line seems to be better thought out than many of the smaller boutique shops. I think that many of the boutique shops do offer us products that are a bit outside the mainstream (this is a good thing). Robbe is offering these low volume boutique products through a distribution network that historically has been well set up for the retail customer.

I have a .60 size Bell 222, and a really small set of electric retracts, it wobbles a lot while spinning up, I wouldn't put them on a .30 size helicopter, and I am not sure that you would get it flying properly with your fuselage, probably much too heavy, try it first as a trainer. Ps as you don't have the canopy fit the front half of the 222 on it.

I wasn’t as confident about the wing tips as these involved double curves but they were also no problem and I was very pleased with the finish, so much so that I decided to cover the rest of the wings. I have to admit I really don’t like that “foamie” look (I’m old school and still think they look more like toys as opposed to models) especially after a few outings to the flying field when it starts to look like dinosaur skin! Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against foam per se, in fact I built a “foamie” over 25 years ago! It was before I went digital so unfortunately it has to be a photo of a photo. I designed the fuselage as a simple box section, then glued slabs of polystyrene foam all round, a lot of cutting and sanding (and mess!) later I had near enough the right shape. I covered it with individual panels of obechi veneer and the end result was very pleasing. Anyway back to the Phoenix: I’d finished the red wing tips in line with the end of the ailerons, this caused a problem as it meant now I had decided to cover all the wing I would have to position the rest of the vinyl very accurately to butt up to the red. I soon found out that handling a metre long piece of sticky backed vinyl is not easy! To do things correctly the wing should be covered first then positioning a relatively small piece of red vinyl for the tip would be easy. I taped the vinyl in place before I removed the backing…… …. but it still wasn’t accurate enough and that is why I ended up using a black demarcation line; to cover the misalignment, but to be honest I think it looks better. The photo clearly shows the nice shiny finish of the covered wing compared to the uncovered aileron.

Some last jobs & changes. I put the ailorn servos further away from the fuselage. Seemed like a good idea, but they're too close to the fuselage in case of a collision or crash (fuselage would damage the servo). It's also the place where the exhaust fumes pass by, should I change for a .15 engine. The big wing fillet leads the rubber band too close to the aileron, so I switched to screw & dowel. Weight is ok for the model, but should be lighter for contest. This one is just for testing, but the next one will be simplified and lighter for contests. Today I've made the first flight of the Spitfire 🙂 It went fine and succesful, the way we always wish. Hand start was good, no tendency to the left. A bit of trimming and shew flew nice. Rolls should be quicker, turns are tight and nice without effort on the elevator. Absolutely no tendency for stall, even when pressed with low power and increasing elevator. Landing was easy, motor off and a good glide, touchdown at very low speed. Flying is really good, visibility of the withe stripe is perfect. I'll have to do some improvements concerning center of gravity (getting rid of the extra 15 grams and trying to bring the accumulator further forward, or moving elevator servo forward. But I'm really looking forward to the next flights! And I have some work to do for improving the plan. It's not very long until the start of contest season. Regards, Timo

Finally, the bird is ready for painting..

Comparison with the different 109 wings. The upwards shape of the Spitfire cowling should be better for hard landings, the prop is higher and better protected.

Weight is ok, although a bit heavy for contest. As it is just a proof of concept plane I used leftover heavy balsa. Weight always sums up quickly 🙂 Happy New Year! Timo