Peter Jenkins

Hi Guys Is anyone using a pipe on a DLE 35 RA? If yes, what sort and what is the critical length to be observed? Thanks.

It is an Act of Parliament JS 50 that controls the use of the airspace in the UK.

Firstly, I never charge a LiPo without using the balance function - without that you run the risk of overcharging one or more cells and undercharging others. If you have a balance charger use it in balance mode and if you don't have a balance charger then it's in your own interests to get one! I charge 2 x 5S 5000 packs in parallel and with a Fast Charge to 95% capacity at 1C they are done in less than an hour. If I go for a 100% charge it takes about 10 to 15 mins longer. If it's taking 2-3 hours to fully charge then you have a problem with the charger or battery or both.

Adrian It all depends on the kv of the motor. If you have a motor with a kv much below 500 then go for the 6S. If you have a motor with a kv or say 550 then a 5S will do the job. A 5S with a 480 kv will not give you the sort of vertical performance that you need in the Mythos. The difference in my Monolog 70 was that I could fly the FAI schedule with a 6S pack but struggled with flying large manoeuvres with the 5S pack. Currently, I'm using 5S packs with a 550 kv motor but, while adequate, it does not give the consistent power of a 6S driving the lower kv motor. In an aerobatic aircraft there is no substitute for power. You can always use part throttle if you end up with too much thrust but not vice versa - believe me, an slightly underpowered aerobatic aircraft is not nice to fly!

BEB, the other thing I also keep tabs on is the internal resistance. You can get a good indication of that by the heat of the pack after discharge. Some are hotter than others - assuming similar use of course - and that is a function of increasing IR and therefore heat being generated in the pack. Around 23 mili ohms for a 5S pack seems to be where things start to go downhill.

You can get a decent canister silencer and header for around £45 off ebay. If you don't have a pipe tunnel then you may need to hang the canister outside the aircraft or else pay a lot more for a custom made silencer. The other thing worth doing to the canister is to wrap it in self amalgamating tape (just Google it to find suppliers) and to use an intake trumpet fitted to the carb using the existing bolts and put the intake inside the motor box. That will cut out a lot of intake roar which is a major source of engine noise - those of us who used to service our own cars will remember the noise from the carb when the air filter was off!

Percy, the issue isn't absolute accuracy, it is flying the correct manoeuvre. A Fig 8 with 45 degree cross over is not what the schedule seeks. The Fig 8 is shown as 2 circles touching i.e. the aircraft must be heading at 90 degrees to the entry direction (give or take) but 45 deg is just wrong. The requirement is also for the 2 rolls to be centred and I've seen folk commence the rolls as they pass centre. Again, that's just the wrong manoeuvre and poor teaching/examining to allow such gross errors through. This is, after all, a National Standard and not something for Club Examiners to make up their own minds upon. What Club Examiners have to do is to decide if the pilot has displayed the requisite safety processes, ability to fly the required manoeuvres to an acceptable standard and to know enough about Air Law and display general aeromodelling knowledge through the Q & A bit. The reason I mention where the current standards on Achievement Schemes are to found is that I have known pilots turn up for tests without knowing what is required or who are using what is contained in an old BMFA Handbook. So, if you are going to take or administer an Achievement Scheme Test, do download the current year's guidance notes. At least you won't be wasting your time in teaching or examining to wrong standards.

Andrew, I agree with Bob. No two aeroplanes fly the same and it is up to you to trim your aircraft to achieve the best performance and handling. Key to good aerobatic performance is the position of the CG. By sticking to the CG marked on the plan you may not have the best position. CG position is the most powerful trimming tool we have! If you establish a 45 degree climb and half roll, release the elevator stick pressure and note if the nose drops or rises. If it rises, you need to move the CG forward as your aircraft is moving into the unstable area. If the nose falls gently then that's fine, if the nose drops very quickly consider moving the CG rearwards. This is very much a suck it and see situation as it depends on how you like to set up your aircraft but generally, you get the best out of sport aerobats when the CG is set so that the nose drops gently in the above test. The next thing that is worth doing s to climb to height and then close the throttle and dive vertically. Adjust the rudder trim so that the aircraft descends without swinging left or right. You now have an aircraft that flys straight without power. The next step is to pull up to the vertical, or near vertical with full power and note which way the nose is pulled out of straight upwards - you already know this as it's swinging to the left. Then apply some right thrust - a washer under the left side mounting bolts. Then check with a full power climb and keep adding washers till the aircraft goes pretty straight for most of the time - you'll never get it exactly right as increasing/decreasing airspeed will alter the side thrust situation. The next thing to check on an aerobatic aircraft is up/down thrust. Do this by flying at the "cruise" setting and adjust elevator trim to fly level hands off. Then smoothly apply full power and note if the aircraft climbs or dives. If it dives, add upthrust and vice versa. Once you have sorted out the above you will be surprised how much easier your workload becomes when flying aerobatics. Good luck.

Chris, you won't damage your pack if you charge at 5.0 amp all the time - as this is below 2C as MattyB has pointed out above. Assuming that your pack is rated at 2C and above. Having read the post title, I had thought you were asking about fast charging and full charging. Generally, a fast charge will take you to about 95% of capacity in under an hour whereas a full charge can take longer depending on how much balancing the charger needs to do to make sure that all the cells are at the same voltage of 4.2 v. As you get close to 4.2 v for each cell then there is much more inter-cell balancing that the charger needs to undertake and that's reflected in the difference in charging time for fast and full charges. Generally speaking, 95% capacity is perfectly adequate provided you are not aiming to get the maximum safe charge out of the pack. You are probably aware that you should aim to discharge no lower than 20% of capacity to prolong battery life.

More important than just age is whether you Examiners keep up to date with the changes in the Achievement Scheme schedules. How many are aware that there is an Achievement Scheme website which contains downloads for all the tests. The tests are meant to be conducted to each year's guidance notes (and they do carry the year on the front cover) yet I still hear strange stories of the odd Examiner requiring the cross over for the fig 8 to be at 45 degrees! That went out years ago. You can find the AS website here

Adrian Firstly, the Rx battery. I used an 800 mah 2S Lipo for my Rx in a Monolog 70 (50 size really). That would be fine for 4 flights of around 10 mins duration. I initially used a 5S 5000 pack, as I had lots of these from my 2 mtr birds, but that didn't provide sufficient oomph as the motor had a lowish kv of 465. I changed to a 6S 4000 mah pack and that did have bags of oomph and gave about 10 mins as well. In both cases, I was down to around 20% remaining. I forget if you are using 5S or 6S but using a higher voltage allows the current draw to be reduced for the same power and keeps things cooler as well. 3800 mah on a 5S would be marginal in my view. From my experience with the Monolog, a 6S 4000 mah pack should give you between 10 and 12 minutes which is enough to fly any of the aerobatic schedules up to P17 with time to spare. You do need to pay attention to the power setting you are using as otherwise you will burn through the pack. It's easily done - as I have proved to myself on several occasions. On my 2 mtr birds, the main batteries, 2 x 5S 5000 mah connected in series take between 3000 and 3500 mah per flight when flying the FAI P17 schedule but only after I'd got control of throttle management! As regards charging time. Set your charger to stop at 95% capacity and it will almost invariably complete in less than an hour. Taking it to 100% takes much longer especially if there is a lot of cell balancing going on at the end. You really don't need the extra 5% with the right sized packs.

Posted by Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator on 02/11/2016 19:58:56: You mean there's two!!!???? OMG! BEB Edited By Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator on 02/11/2016 19:59:11 I certainly had a success! I did a dummy buy first to find out how it worked and then an actual buy. I placed the order at around noon on Monday for 2 Turnigy LiPos (5S 5000 20C) and received them on Tuesday morning. It does take a bit of time to get used to the new process that they have introduced. So far, I've only tackled the LiPo problem so I don't know if it's as easy buying anything else.

That's brave Martyn!

Agreed that comps do not float everyone's boat but you do learn so much from flying in one. You can enter a GBR/CAA comp without joining the Association for your first comp - just pay the entry fee which is £5 for a Clubman schedule. Failing that, assuming you already have a B cert, why not try for the C Aerobatic? With the Mythos properly trimmed out it should be both good fun and improve your flying. Mind you, as it's flown like the B, i,e, not a schedule with every manoeuvre flown in front of the pilot (no end manoeuvres) it is easier than flying even the Clubman schedule where there is a manoeuvre in the centre and at each turnaround end. If you exit one manoeuvre wrongly, you compromise the next manoeuvre. With the C, you have time to sort yourself out while you fly a reversal to come back to the centre. You'll find the details of the C here.

Well, I finally decided to go back onto the HK site and after a going through a dummy buy found that you have to get almost to the end of the process before you can select which warehouse from whom you want to buy. As Geoff has said above, you can set the range for LiPo size and tick the box for no of cells and up comes a listing with prices. Not sure how things would have worked out if the LiPo I was interested in buying had not been available at the UK Warehouse - I would have gone a long way through the buying process to find out it was out of stock! Perhaps that's the intention? Bottom line is that I made the purchase at about 12:45 in the afternoon and got a text at 1930 from Parcelforce telling me to expect delivery tomorrow. That's never happened before so perhaps their systems are running a lot faster now.

Adrian, I asked as you said you were looking at Extreme Flight aircraft and the only F3A aircraft they produce are the Vanquish in either 50 size or the 2 mtr full F3A bird, with which I started flying F3A competitions. Talking of which, are you intending to enter any precision aerobatic competitions? I competed against someone flying an Angel 50 at Masters level and he flew well enough to win the league that year so a well flown 50 size machine can do the biz - you just need a pilot to keep up with it!

Hi Adrian - Matty's beaten me to it! BTW, if you are in the market for another leccy bird, you might want to take a look at the Bondaero site. They offer a range of aircraft from full F3A to 120/70 sizes plus some IMAC stuff. The question is, where does your interest lie? F3A, IMAC or 3D?

Well done Adrian! What I said in my post was elevator and aileron to 10 deg and did not mention the rudder. I should have said about 25 deg for the rudder for starters but the only way to sort out the aircraft is to fly it and see how it handles. Adjust from there. The rudder needs to be sufficiently powerful to perform stall turns. For spinning, you will need as much elevator as necessary firstly to stall the aircraft and secondly to keep it stalled while in the spin. I usually go for max rudder throw for spinning as well. I agree with MattyB re using the ESC as a power source. I also have a 50 size electric and use a 2S Lipo through a Powerbox Digiswitch to provide 5.9 V output. This does not add much weight and you can probably site it on the CG or use it to move the CG around. Do experiment with different CG positions as this is the single most important trimming tool available. Obviously be careful when moving the CG rearwards but provided you do it in small stages it is all very safe - you don't suddenly get a very twitchy aircraft. As regards landing speed, these aircraft can slow up quite a lot. Try it at height at first and you'll find that it will fly quite slowly without a problem. I have no difficulty landing my 2 mtr electric even in a flat calm provided I get the approach speed right.

Hi Rich The answer is yes, unfortunately. However, if you take note of all the settings in your old Tx you can then transfer them to your new Tx and you should be just about there. Do check that everything works as you intended though before you fly, including the Failsafe. All the set up info in in the Tx and not the Rx.

I think the new website has a number of faults. First, I cannot see how to select the UK warehouse, or any other for that matter. Second, the ability to select the number of cells for a LiPo has been removed making buying a battery almost impossible without just hunting from page to page. Third, their prices seem all over the place. What's the from price mean? The account information tabs are quite good though.

John, I used to think Xoar props were great till I used Falcon. I now just use Falcon. No props are perfectly balanced IMHO. I've had to balance Xoar, Falcon, APC you name it. If you don't have a prop balancer then it's a great investment. Also, it is sometimes the hub/hole that is the problem so that the blades can be balanced with the heavy spot on the prop hub at the bottom but turn it round and it will not balance. You need to remove some weight from the edge of the hub - carefully!

Devcon1 - the Zephyr is used by the military - you cannot just pole up to Airbus and cough up £4.3 m for a copy without a very good reason for doing so! Both the UK and US military have used Zephyr. Note that it's intended to fly at a very high altitude ca 70,000 ft! Even the UK MoD can only fly Zephyr, and Reaper for that matter, inside one of their ranges apart from "use in operational areas".

John, I run an AGM 30 (DLE 30 clone) using one of these canisters (about £46). The muffler supplied with these engines is useless. The Edge may well have a tunnel for a canister which will make this a viable solution. As mentioned, the choice of prop is also important. I use a Falcon Beechwood 17x10 (£11) and I also use an extended carb intake trumpet (£23) - this shields the intake noise by putting the carb intake inside the motor box - you may need to widen the hole in the box for the trumpet to fit. I got my intake trumpet from IAD Designs but there must be others who sell them as well. All of these have made the engine noise comparable with a 120 glow and quite acceptable. I've yet to measure the noise with a meter but I'm hopeful it will meet 82 db. The aircraft I'm flying is an HK Sbach 30 cc which tips the scales at 5.3 Kg and the vertical performance is unlimited. A solution that will cost around £80 ain't bad value!

Posted by Percy Verance on 23/10/2016 19:22:07: Peter I wouldn't lose any sleep over the Waterhouse & Ely Superfly. I built one for a chap I was teaching 25 odd years ago, and I wasn't particularly impressed. It had the most fragile glass fibre fuselage I've ever seen on a model. The slightest knock and the surface of the fus would craze and shatter. It was also a bit too heavy to fly nicely too...... Well, that's good to know. My Superfly didn't last its maiden! My instructor was given the job of flying the maiden but my skinflint approach to this airframe meant I used some second had servos. Sadly, the elevator servo gears chose the maiden to strip themselves and the Superfly went in vertically. The fuz certainly crazed and shattered but I would think most others would have done so in the circumstances!

I would recommend 10 deg up and down for both elevators and ailerons - these are good starting points for an F3A machine. You'll probably need the 30 deg on elevator for spinning and possibly more depending on where you end up with your CG. It will make a very twitchy first flight if you go with 30 deg!