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To ban the use of the Swastika is a denial of history. Very bad things happened under this symbol and I can understand why some people can get emotional at the sight of this symbol, but then, if modern thinking is denial then we risk sinking to the same level of the people who misused this ancient symbol for their own nefarious purposes. We cannot rewrite history and indeed, we owe it to our descendants to preserve it (warts and all) so that they may (hopefully) learn from it. It may be more productive to educate our peers and successors regarding the swastika so that they may have a better understanding of the history of our world in the 20th century. I actually have a few models of WWII German aircraft and for historical accuracy, they indeed include a swastika on the tailfin. My mother was English and my father was a WWII RAF (Polish) bomber pilot and I am sure that they would have no issues with my building such models. On the other hand, I have ZERO TOLERANCE for idiots that mis-use this symbol to promote their own (warped) idealistic fantasies. A neo-nazi has just been arrested at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra for being an idiot on this most sacred day in Australia and New Zealand. ANZAC Day. * chris *

This is how wood carvers peel a tangerine. Definitely worth a look. 718757-4d23ed864a9cd77721f2535320156b49.mp4

12 years ago today, my mate Dave came running out of the room shouting “ it’s a boy”…. … . … .….we never did go back to Thailand

Yes I know it won't fly but it was made by a modeller who flies an assortment of planes. Made between 1965 and 1975 it is R/C and was made from pics scaled down. The material is old metal oil cans, the seat is wood and the tracks aluminium sheet milled to size. The track securing links, old brass curtain hooks (those of a certain age will remember). The owner and his brother, who aided the building, both used to drive these for a living. Just thought some appreciation of the skill involved as we often rightly praise our scale modellers.

Picked up a hitchhiker. Seemed like a nice guy. After a few miles, he asked me if I wasn’t afraid that he might be a serial killer. I told him that the odds of two serial killers being in the same car were extremely unlikely. He got out at the next stop — funny that.

Byron and I saved on our gym fees this weekend as our field had been flooded so we managed to get in on Friday and start cutting the grass and no ride on mower is used, just 2 normal mowers! Managed to get some good flying in on Saturday and again on Monday which was great. The Beaufighter is flying quite well but you need to fly it all the time, plenty of power which does help. Wessie brought out his Mustang again which flew very well until the motor started acting up and Byron had to quickly bring it in for a good landing. They were very lucky as it had developed a fuel supply issue and would not start after that. The porter was fun, the OS 220 has no problem pulling it around with most flying a less than half throttle. The Telemaster is electric and normally only gets an outing when the kids are at the field and is used to drop marshmallows!

I took mine out today too, I had a friend use my camera to take some snaps. Alas I caused the session to be cut short by over exuberance and touched the ground and snapping an aileron horn, entirely my fault.

My latest scratch build using composite construction of Depron, and planked xps foam all 50g epoxy cloth covered. Built from scaled up 3 view and pics. found on internet. Model is of Avro 539. Presently fitted with wheeled undercarriage, but will probably convert to floats after test flights, hence use of foat plane fin. Scale 1 / 5. 60inch wingspan. weight 2.45 kilos. This is the second Avro 539 I have built. Last one, 40 inch span is fast, agile, and great fun to fly. Will be interesting to see any different flight characteristics of larger model. Waiting for wood prop. Plastic prop just does not look right.

Lovely early evening sesh with the Gangster 63 Lite. I hadn't flown it since last year and, especially after tooling around with the Irvine Tutor recently (very nice but a bit of a bus really), I'd forgotten just what a superb precise classic aerobat it is! Goes exactly where one puts it, rolls like a dream, does all the other stuff beautifully, slows right down without a hint of a stall yet burns rubber when the throttle is opened up. But the session didn't start that way... The first thing that was amiss was in the car park after attaching the wing - ailerons were completely unresponsive! Checked the outputs screen on the Tx which confirmed zero aileron signal, same when loaded other models from the memory. Only thing for it was to unscrew the back and check the several right-stick gimbal connections into the PCB by pulling the plugs off then pushing back in place - which did the trick. Second worry, having carried the model and the field box for ten minutes to our patch, was a refusal to start - and my arm was beginning to hurt! I'd recently removed the heavy 12v 7Ah Pb battery and the electric starter to lighten the load, as they're not usually necessary with any of my engines, and I knew the obvious and only reason was an engine full of after-run oil from before the winter plus a new fuel recipe. So I just carried on flipping and flipping, priming and clearing and flipping at various low throttle settings until eventually the Irvine 53 burst into life! Next thing to deal with was re-tuning for the new fuel mix (was MT Bekra 5, now Southern Modelcraft Laser 5) as the engine kept dying at low revs. I'd had the same issue a few days ago with the Tutor's OS46AX, found the solution then was to richen the low-speed needle a quarter-turn, so immediately tried the exactly same thing here and it was perfect. Funny that. 🤣 Then two tankfuls (total 25mins) of totally dream flying! The best bit was being able to spin reliably every time in either direction, and slowly enough to count the turns and exit on the same heading. I filled a third tank but the kickback I sometimes get on hand-starting eventually loosened the prop nut and the second 'locking' nut together... and I didn't have a cross-head screwdriver of the right size that could remove the spinner! But it was time to go home anyway and fix a late supper... a perfect evening.

If only!

This is my wee self designed cartoon Caproni ch1 wing span of 36cm, auw of 40g, 1s brushless system with about 60g thrust. my first non-stabilised aileron control, foam, acrobatic plane that I’ve designed and flown. what can go wrong, posting this here incase it never looks like this again!!!

Aberdeen Tempest Squadron was out today.. Great flying and no breakages!! Photos courtesy of Derek Robertson.

By all means draw attention to quality issues / weak points in these models and show methods by which they can be overcome but if you left out the references to the company’s management / workforce it would make a much nicer read. After all, you highlighting the bad points is, in itself, a direct criticism of the company anyway why labour the point?

About a month ago I decided that I needed a slope soarer as one of my clubs had planned a visit to the North Norfolk coast for some sloping. I haven't flown a sloper since the early 80's and no longer had any in my collection but back then I used to fly a Chris Foss Middle Phase and loved it but always wanted a Phase 5 (not Ripmax). So I went ahead and bought the plan then made a laser cut kit and built it. I made a few changes including a 4 servo wing but wherever possible kept to the Foss design. the fuselage has been glassed with 25g cloth but the fin, rudder all moving elevator and wings have been covered with laminating film. It's then been primed and painted using car paints. According to Chris the original came out weighing 2 ¾ lbs and required no nose weight, mine has a 1300 mAh 3S battery but still required nose weight and has come out at 2.65 lbs but Chris says that he tended to always fly with his ballasted to about 3 ½ lbs so shouldn't be a problem. I will probably create a YouTube vid of the build using photos as the process involved converting the paper plan into electronic media that I could use in Fusion 360. I also used techniques that, if you watched last year's ITAT sessions you will have seen, in particular how I created the rib set and also the shear web pieces! Anyway I'm now waiting for favourable wind conditions for the maiden but in the meantime here is the model

I came home one night and found my mate in bed with my wife, so I shot him dead. The wife said, “ if you keep doing that, you’ll have no friends left”

It's a technique also used by plastic kit manufacturers, supplying the markings in separate parts that you then need to combine. It allows Durafly to provide a symbol of evil for these models. However it doesn't extend to other symbols of evil, in the form of Durafly servos, which they make no attempt to disguise and provide those offensive items already installed and just waiting to do their worst.

Hope he turned out better than Paul, did he get addicted to caster oil. Costs a fortune in bog rolls.

It has nothing to do with 'woke'. In fact it seems that the 'anti-woke' brigade now more often gratiutously anticipate complaints of offensive situations that actualy occur.

Ready for paint. Bare bones weight with spinner is 2lbs 4oz or 1010 grams. First time for brown paper covering, although have used tissue before. Used ezee coat on tail plane and dope on the rest. I'd forgotten how strong the smell was with conventional dope. Used to mix talc with dope, really good finish when that was used in past.

Spot on Piers. A sub to the magazine is about a quid a week and still good value to be had. If, as modellers making use of the forum, we don't support the magazine, who do we expect to do so?

Not sure how many times this has to be repeated, but the survival of the hobby , or more pertinently the magazine, is definitely not dependent on 14 year olds, or indeed under 30 year olds. The demographic in the hobby which provides for replacement of the natural wastage of participants is very firmly in the over 40#s - over 50's age bracket, often as returnees to the hobby after a break. It looks as though that is the case for plastic kits as well, based on what one sees on social media and TV. That demographic does still attach value to print media, as well as online sources and as such the visual appeal of a magazine, as well as the written content remains important. You are highly unlikely to attract the under thirties via a magazine article, but they are not really the target audience for a magazine anyway.

One of the best bits about this platform is we get very little "Culture war" rubbish, not that difficult to express an opinion without reaching for the "woke" or "gammon" button is it ?

I've seen the same mistake made in so many other walks of life. Organisations move all the goal posts to try to attract the younger audience/crowd/participation. What I think they fail to realise is that younger people, and I agree with leccyflyer in calling thirty somethings younger people, are doing other things. Will that change in the future, I certainly hope so and once this fad with sit on your sofa and have everything at your fingertips right now is done, the traditional pastimes will make a comeback. This is happening with model railways who are attracting younger participants. All we can do as older persons is keep this hobby going long enough for it still to be there when the younger generations come around. So I totally concur with leccyflyer that the magazines should be aimed at who is actually buying them.

Banks really should try to do a better job of keeping their ATMs filled, especially at bank holiday times. . I've been to six today that have all said, Insufficient Funds..

Had 4 lovely flights with my Warbirds Replicas La7 today. It’s a real pleasure to fly with its Laser 80 giving me long 15minute flights. The handling is smooth despite the added weight of my rather heavy but strong build. I wanted to give it a run as it hadn’t been out since last year

Wasn't sure how good it was gonna be at the field this morning, but it ended up being damn-near perfect. Very light breeze, nice temps, only marred by a tiny bit of rain at one point. Only me and one other chap at the field (who was flying his helicopters), so I managed to get three flights in with the FT Spitfire before I had to call it a day. Tried a few aerobatics and low-level flights. I hadn't held out much hope for this Spitfire to be any good (especially compared to the stripey one), but this one is fantastic!

It's a complete pain when removing the internal filleting to fit an engine mount to a new model if you didn't make provision beforehand. I decided to make a gadget to get round this which I found most useful on an almost complete Wot4 that was left to me by a deceased friend. He'd built it with little idea as to which engine to fit or even if he was up to flying it after a long layoff from the hobby. I have decided to finish it but it needs an engine so I chose an Irvine 61 out of my collection as the most suitable. Some time ago I had this same problem, of my own making, that time, so I made a drill with a gouge on the end which is turned 180 degrees to operate from the inside of a predrilled hole. The idea is that it is threaded through the engine mount hole and clamped in a drill chuck. The drill is pulled into fillet, milling away a perfect counter-bore for a captive tee nut to be installed. Care has to be taken not to pull too much as there is a danger of coming all the way through the firewall.

In case anyone is unfamiliar with annealing aluminium, the trick is to rub ordinary bar soap on one side and heat from behind it until the soap turns dark brown. Don't rely on previous annealing - many aluminium alloys tend to age harden in a fairly short time.

I confess I don't feel very comfortable with the symbol at all and would not have it on any plane I own. It was, and continues to represent, all that I find most abhorrent. I don't object to seeing it in its historical context, in a museum for example, and I respect those purists who would insist on it in a scale model, though I guess other compromises are often made so I am not always convinced of the necessity. Aside from my own feelings about it, I try to be a decent human being and if not having it means I avoid offending or upsetting a fellow flyer then I am happy to not offend them. if that makes me woke, then I am happy to be so. I do get why the social platforms ban it, policing it without AI is almost impossible and I would rather they policed the content than not at all.

Yes we have one in our club. Woke has taken over. A swastika and its use by the Nazis is a histotical fact. We must not change history less we forget and woke seems to want to forget.

Wessie did this for us

Hi All, Southern Modelcraft is most definitely still trading and hope to be for many years to come The lack of stock on the webshop is mainly due to revemping the mixing setup for Glow and Diesel fuels so alot of orders recently are over email As most jobs go time gets ahead and I understand the confusion but Southern Modelcraft is most definitely still here So currently contact me by email ([email protected]) if the item shows no stock on the webshop, but shortly that stock will be added back Many Thanks Justin

Just found this in the skip at work. Quick clean up and it works fine. What some people throw away!

This one needs its own thread.