David Davis

Mine didn't!

Nice one Ron! Just a word to the wise. I see that you, like me, will be using a bolt-on undercarriage. Mine used the undercarriage from a WOT 4 XL which was burned in a house fire and as you probably know, this is a substantial piece of metal. It was OK until I came into the slowest, gentlest and most perfect three-point landing on the glider strip alongside our tarmac runway. Then the mounting block ripped out and damaged the fuselage and tailplane the wing was slightly damaged too. Most of it is cosmetic and shouldn't take too long to repair but I have been side tracked by Barons and Junior 60s. I'm sure I used half-hour epoxy to glue it into place but I'll have to find a way of reinforcing the block. I'll fit a carbon fibre undercarriage which will be a little more flexible than the WOT 4 XL job.

Or maybe he's just out of practice!

Latest update on my preparations for La Coupe des Barons. Yesterday, for the first time in several weeks, I had both models in serviceable condition at the same time. Each was equipped with a new APC 12 x6 propeller, the same OS F glowplug, the same engine but the Ukrainian Baron's engine was minus a few optional parts. See the picture above! The same fuel was used so I was able to do a side by side comparison. I found that Boris, my Ukrainian Baron was a little less stable compared to Bertie, my Baron in British markings. I'm not quite sure why. I've recently had to repair the firewall of Boris following an avoidable landing accident. I took the opportunity to replace the throttle servo with a smaller one so perhaps that's moved the centre of gravity a little further rearwards, may be it's something to do with Boris's wing being 100mm or 4 inches longer than Bertie's or may be it's just that I have got used to flying Bertie while Boris has been in workshops. Whatever the case I have decided enter the British Baron in the competition and keep the Ukrainian model as a spare in case I damage Bertie in practice. Photos of both models to follow once I have collected Ukrainian roundels from the printer.

A few years ago one of my clubmates fitted an electric prop to a glow engine. It was a hot summer day and he was wearing a tee shirt and shorts. One of the propeller blades broke away hitting him in the chest removing one of his nipples. It sounds funny it but was no joke at the time, there was blood everywhere. Fortunately the club chairman was a retired nurse-manager, someone phoned an ambulance which arrived quickly and took he was taken to hospital where he was patched up. Lesson learned.

Given that my model has an orange rudder and wing tips, I decided to paint the engine orange! It's made up of broken spares from the scrap box anyway! ☺️

They don't need 10% nitro. 5% is plenty. Perhaps they will run on straight, my smaller older Lasers do..

Hier Aufheben.

Watching with interest. I'm considering powering mine with an electric motor. Uncharachteristic of me I know!😉

The Mercury Galahad seems to do alright.

I doubt that my model would have the range to fly from the middle of France to South Wales!

I do likewise in La Coupe Des Barons. That said, I also have one in Ukrainian markings which is slightly easier to fly so I will probably fly that one in this year's competition.

The Germans did not conquer most of Europe using aircraft with five or six feet wingspans. In Germany and France I can understand why the swastika is banned but I think that we tend to go overboard with trivial matters like this rather than working out what to do about real hate campaigns. I have no plans to build a German WW2 aircraft but I'm told that model FW190s fly very well so if I were to build one it would be a FW190 but I would finish it in RAF markings to simulate that one which landed in South Wales. Captured aircraft were also repainted in Soviet and American markings.

For the last eight years I have used a VW LT 28 as my basic transport. I think I should be able to fit a Stampe into the van fully assembled.

Are you able to buy ether in France Flynn? If so where?