Peter Jenkins

Some of you might think I’m being very pedantic on this trimming issue. Well, in aerobatics, you are less concerned with just flying your model as you with flying specific shapes. To help you to do that, we try and make the actual flying part as easy as possible. A well set up aerobatic aircraft is incredibly easy to fly. That lets you fly your chosen shapes very easily. However, to fly those chosen shapes perfectly is very difficult. Luckily, you can have enormous fun flying imperfect shapes while you dream about being able to fly the perfect shape one day! OK, our next task having settled on our CG is to sort out the engine/motor thrust line. First, fly your aircraft at its cruising power setting (65% say) in a straight line parallel to the runway and into wind. As the aircraft comes abeam your position, smoothly advance the throttle to full power and watch to see if the model dives or climbs. If you are very lucky, it might do neither and just proceed in horizontal flight – if you’re lucky that is! So, if the model climbs, that tells us we have too much upthrust. Depending on how your engine is mounted (upright, inverted, sidewinder) you need to tilt the thrustline downwards. If you have an upright engine mounted on typical engine mounting beams, put a washer behind the two top attachment bolts of the engine mount. Then go and repeat the exercise above. Note, that you’ll need to re trim for straight and level flight as you’ve altered the downthrust. If the model descends when you apply full power, then you need some upthrust so, for an upright mounted engine place a washer between the firewall and engine mount for the bottom two bolts. Once you’ve got that sorted, and don’t worry if you cannot get it absolutely perfect so long as there is a substantial period of time when the aircraft flight path continues unchanged. Next, we’ll sort out the side thrust. To do this fly into wind with the aircraft straight and level at cruising power. Then smoothly ease the aircraft into a vertical climb and at the same time smoothly advance the throttle to maximum and watch what the aircraft does. Do not make any adjustment to the rudder while you do this. If the flight path curves to the left, then you need to put more right thrust onto the engine/motor and if it goes to the right you need to reduce your right thrust or put some left side thrust on. For more right thrust, and again for a vertically mounted motor, put a washer between the firewall and the engine mount on the two left hand mounting bolts. For less right thrust, put a washer between the firewall and engine mount on the right hand 2 mounting bolts. Keep doing this until the aircraft goes straight up for a reasonable amount of time – certainly for as high as you would like to go for a stall turn. You can mix some rudder to throttle or elevator to throttle to give you a similar effects, but my experience is that sorting sidethrust issues using mixing is not as good as moving the motor thrustline.

Graeme, I think the 0/0/0 set up was appropriate because the aircraft of that era flew at a much higher speed than today's do. Ballistic is the word I think! Re the Wot4, I recently fitted mine, which has an Irvine 53 Mk 2 (brilliant engine and lighter than the 40!) with a mini pipe. The performance has been transformed so that I can now fly almost any size loop I want with the only problem being to keep the beast in sight! I do have quite low rates for flying aeros with the Wot 4 and increase rates for spinning as otherwise you just get a spiral dive. I also use the higher rates for snaps but these are so fast you have to be lightening quick to do just one!

Hi Max 50 A Speed Air with an OS55AX sounds a good piece of kit. If you follow all the trimming steps I will be describing you'll have a great platform for aerobatics and something that will take you through to your B certificate if that's what you want. One side effect of getting comfortable with aerobatics is that your confidence in dealing with aircraft in unusual positions means that you stand less chance of crashing. The other tip is not to fly too low as your margin for error is then significantly reduced and you use up a lot more adrenaline!

OK, we’ve set up our aircraft, the CG is in the middle of the recommended range, the control throws are set, we have some lower rates set as well. Like Algy, I use 80% for the low rate to begin with. If you have the option of 3 rates then you can use an even lower rate for the third position. This can be particularly helpful when learning how to slow roll, of which more later. The first thing you’ll do when you get your newly set up aircraft airborne is to trim for straight and level flight. You’ll want around 60%-70% power. If you are flying a pattern type aircraft with better than 1:1 power to weight ratio (i.e. it you release it at full power point vertically upwards it will accelerate away) you’ll only want 50% power. There is another approach which is to trim the aircraft on the elevator so that you need the same amount of pull to maintain upright level flight as you need push to maintain inverted level flight. By all means give it a go, but I find it a lot easier to operate with the aircraft trimmed to fly hands off upright. To avoid confusion, when I say hands off, I mean release the sticks keeping your fingers in close proximity and watch what the aircraft does and trim accordingly. If you can adjust the trim steps on your Tx set them to 3 or 4 steps per click for the first flight and then set them to 1 step per click for the second flight to fine tune your setup. The next step is to decide where you want your CG. Do this first as if you go through the full trimming process and then decide you don’t like the CG position and change it, you’ll have to re-do all the following trim steps. For aerobatic aircraft, you do not want high levels of stability in pitch but equally you don’t want an unstable aircraft. Some folks like a neutral aircraft but I prefer a slightly positive stability aircraft. To establish how your CG affects your aircraft’s handling, climb to a safe height, pull to 45 degree climb, then roll inverted and see what happens when you relax your hold on the elevator. If the aircraft pitches downwards rapidly, your aircraft is in the too stable area and you’ll need to move the CG back. If it pitches up, your CG is rather too far aft (although for good 3D flying you might want it there). What you are looking for the aircraft to gradually pitch nose down. Adjust the position of your battery pack to achieve the change in CG or else use sticky lead weights mounted on the extreme tail of the aircraft – but not on the flying surfaces! This will give you the greatest effect for least weight added. Once you have the CG right you will find that you may have to adjust your elevator trim as well. If you’ve had to use a lot of trim to achieve level flight at your selected cruise power, you may wish to re-centre your servos and adjust the linkages to give you the right amount of control surface movement. Doing this will mean that you have an equal amount of control movement around your chosen straight and level position. It’s worth spending time on getting your trim set up correctly as it can make a huge difference to the way an aircraft feels. My earlier comment about how a clubmate felt when he flew my Wot4 illustrates the point. He said, it was as if he was flying a completely different aircraft and that it was so much easier to fly than his Wot4. So, it really is worth doing this and getting it right before your move on to the next step. Peter

Graeme I've sent you a PM on your first point. On your second point, I think we are at cross purposes. I accept that if you have a 5 mm ball with a 5 mm socket you are going to get a seized up feeling! The degree of clearance required is so small that for all intents and purposes I cannot see any lost movement. I use a bolt through ball joint that is already located in its socket housing - does that make sense to you? - and once bolted up the only movement is due to the residual servo backlash. How good should a servo be at centering? Well, I won't name servos here, but a quite expensive servo I was using had its centre vary when returning from the two extremes of travel of 2 mm at the elevator TE. On a pattern ship it was deemed unacceptable so I changed to Futaba and they return to the same place every time. JR also have excellent centering. Peter

Hi Ultymate If you look, I was answering a question raised by Graeme Jones on the wing/tail/engine alignment. It was not my intention to make this a competition pilot thread and start the discussion with these types of details. However, unless you set up your model correctly with the basics, it will not perform as it could. I alluded earlier to setting up a Wot4 and those and other standard airframes is what I am principally looking to help folks set up correctly. If subsequently, some go on to fly in competition that's a bonus. It's just as easy to set up an aircraft correctly and read the benefits as failing to set it up correctly and then finding that it's difficult to fly accurate aerobatics. I agree entirely with your comments in bold but we need to do the basics first otherwise you will always have difficulty flying lines accurately. I have found that out in practice. By the way, you are wrong about only high end F3A models having adjustable incidences. The Vanquish, which is an entry level F3A airframe has adjustable incidences. Some high end machines don't as their designer believes that he knows best! You are more than welcome to contribute, as you have done. I don't own this thread. I am merely trying to provide some guidance to those who want it and judging by the response to this thread so far, it appears to be what at least some people are looking for. Peter

Steve, Thanks for your comments. I have also taken to writing down all the Tx set up detail as I had to do that when I changed Transmitters and there was no way I could work out to have these details transferred - there probably is but it was beyond me! I also write down all the initial set up details for the model but I'm less good at returning to alter the figures once I start tweaking the trim settings! It's easy to see how many sticky weights you've stuck on, but if you have adjustable wing/tail incidence, once you start down the route of adjusting those then you need to go back and measure the new angles that you've set up. I'm not very good at closing that loop! Peter

Hi Graeme, In most cases, where people have built from a plan or assembled an ARTF, there is no adjustment of wing or tail incidence. Where you are talking about F3A pattern aircraft then you will find that some come with adjusters for wing or wing and tailplane incidence. In the latter case, the usual setup is as follows: Decide on what to use as your datum point on the aircraft; set the fuselage at 0 deg for the datum. set the wings at +0.5 deg set the tailplane at 0 deg engine thrust line may already be set for you by the designer by angling the firewall for both down and side thrust. If not, then I would start without any up/down thrust and set 2 deg right side thrust. set CG to the mid point of the range specified. If none specified then set it to 30% of mean aerodynamic chord These are your start points and you adjust from there until you get the aircraft to fly in the way that you want/feel comfortable with. As regards your second point, I entirely agree that ball links eliminate the slop at the servo/horn junction. The rest of the slop is accounted for by how well the servo gears have been made, how well the hinging of the control surface has been carried out and how stiff a control rod you are using. Using a snake will introduce some variability in response depending on how well it has been supported along its length and what measures have been taken to support it from the exit of the fuselage to the control horn. I have found that Futaba, JR and some Spektrum servos have very little slop but more importantly excellent centreing. If you have good hinging, a stiff pushrod, ball links at each end and a good servo, you will have a very tiny amount of slop - as you say, it's almost impossible to get rid of since there are manufacturing tolerances in servo gears. If you go to town and spend over £100 on a single servo then you would probably approach zero backlash in the gears. One thing you don't want is a pushrod with a bend or crank in it. That introduces a degree of flexibility in the control run and can lead to flutter of the control surface. Flutter is caused by aerodynamic forces which feed back through a flexible pushrod and cause the control surface to literally flutter - it doesn't take long for the control surface to be destroyed or the servo gears to be stripped. To be avoided at all costs! If you dive your aircraft and you hear a buzzing noise, the chances are you are hearing the onset of flutter. Land and investigate as soon as possible. As regards your second point, as you go further away from the servo shaft, any backlash is amplified. The angular movement remains constant but the further out you go the greater the linear effect. If you don't believe me, draw yourself a diagram or, better still, tape a long pointer to the servo arm and measure the linear backlash close into the servo shaft and that at the end of the pointer. True, by connecting to an even longer control horn you get back some of this unwanted inaccuracy but unless there are very good reasons for following this course, I would always go for the hole nearest to the servo shaft and use standard length control horns at the control surface. You may have to move outwards because the pushrod is fouling the servo shaft or you need to clear some part of a structure. Incidentally, you can get rid of all backlash and still have a smoothly operating control system - it does not lock solid. You will need to pick your servos very carefully though to achieve that nirvana. Hope that helps. Peter

OK. We’ve got our servos sorted out and the pushrods connected up so there is no slop. Oh, dear, there still is some slop. Well, take a good look at the way you have hinged your flying surfaces. If this is with mylar hinges, and you didn’t push the control surface bang up to the fixed part you may have built two issues. First, if the hinges are not particularly stiff you will have some unwanted movement of the control surface. Why not cut through the hinges, re-slot for new hinges and re-do the hinges making sure that you push the control surface up against the fixed surface. That will eliminate the slack and reduce the gap between the two surfaces. If you have Robart style pin hinges and have this problem then the solution is the same. Do remember that if you have mounted your control horn with its pushrod holes level with the leading edge of the control surface you have introduced some non-linear movement into the control surface. It may not have mattered a great deal before, but if you want to fly accurate manoeuvres little things like this will make your life much harder! If you want to make things even better, you can always seal the gap with tape. What sort of tape? Well, I quite like a tape called Blenderm, available from chemists. But you could also use Solartrim or equivalent trim applied using the soapy water trick. The main thing is not to introduce any stiffness to the control surface hinging by using these techniques. Once you’ve done these things and re-checked your control throws, you’re ready for the next bit – CG. I’ve noticed that many club pilots set the CG for their first flight and never think about it again. I used to do that as well until I was discussing the fact that I needed more elevator movement for the final flare for landing. My mentor suggested moving the CG back a bit at a time. So as in this setup I couldn’t move the Rx battery, I armed myself with some sticky weights (pop down to your local tyre fitters and see if you can blag some sticky lead off them) and set to to stick on 5 gm weights as far aft as I could on my Wot 4. You will be amazed at the difference in the model’s behaviour with the CG in the optimum position. When a club mate flew my Wot 4 he was amazed that mine was so much nicer to fly than his. So I helped him to get his set up with a similar CG and his then flew as well as mine – once he’d also turned down the amount of control throw as well! So, where should the CG be then? It depends on where you start! You will usually get a range for CG position. I usually opt for the middle position, and if the information is accurate and your maiden flight ended with a normal landing, you have at least established one safe position. What I do to check if the CG is where I like it, is to pull the model into a 45 deg climb, hold that for a short while and then half roll to inverted. Then watch what happens with the elevator stick left at its centre position. The model will usually drop its nose indicating the model is stable. I prefer to keep moving the CG back (in 5 gm steps) until the model just starts to drop its nose when inverted. I have on one occasion found the nose gently pitching upwards which is an indication that you are getting into the unstable area and you should land and move the CG forward! If the model holds its flight path then you have found the neutral point – this generally means that what ever position in which you place your model, it will continue to hold that position. I prefer to have a stable aircraft so I avoid both the neutral and unstable behaviour. Peter

Shaunie Flying lots of different types of aircraft is good fun, but I found out as you have, that when you have to keep changing the way to fly several times during your day at the patch, it is difficult to get good at any one thing. I found that my flying began to improve once I focused on flying just one aircraft. I got so used to it I began to get quite good at flying consistently - not as well as I would have liked but a lot better than I had been achieving. I happened to be preparing for my B certificate so stuck with it and flew just my Wot 4 for 5 months. It paid off as I got my B and I found that I could adapt to fly my other aircraft very much better than I used to. I also found that I could now fly in weather up to a 20 mph 90 deg cross wind (not to be recommended by the way) as well as cutting down on my crashes. I thought that was a fair return to sticking with one aeroplane for 5 months. Where I see people come to the patch with 3 quite different aircraft and they are struggling to fly half decently, I recommend that they just fly one until their competence improves significantly. Sadly, most of them ignore that advice and continue to struggle to improve. Worth thinking about. Peter

Masher, I think your solution seems fine. The one thing to bear in mind is that while initial set up is very important, after that it's a matter of tweaking things until you get the desired effect. More on that later.

I had a Black Horse Speed Air. That will be good enough to take you to your B certificate. Put an Irvine 53 (if you can get one) in it and you'll be well away.

Well, that’s an encouraging response! I should state right here that I can’t do 3D so I’d be looking to someone to chime in to help folks with that aspect. I do fly traditional aerobatics, or precision aerobatics as it is sometimes called. What differentiates these two styles is the way the aircraft is set up. However, that’s some way down the track. As FB3 and Steve Colman have correctly identified, the first thing is trimming your model. So, let’s start there. Well, let’s start right at the servos first. The best way to ensure that you are making full use of the power and resolution of your servos is to spend a little time on setting them up correctly. By that I mean setting up the linkages to be as correct as possible. Here’s one way. You start by looking at what you want to produce in the way of movement on your control surface. If you are intending to fly traditional, or precision, aerobatics then you do not need vast amounts of throw. For 3D, you do so if you want to have an airframe that does both you will need to make some compromises on performance. If you focus on just one discipline then you can optimise for that and get a better outcome. At the end of the day, the pilot’s skill will be the dominant factor in achieving the desired result but the right aeroplane, correctly set up don’t half help! So, back to the servos. When you mounted your servos did you set the sub trim to 0 and then place the servo arm on (Futaba allows you to adjust the horn position in 4 steps) so that you get the servo arm at 90 deg to the servo centreline. Only use the sub trim then for fine adjustments. This prevents problems of having oodles of sub trim wound in to get the servo arm centred which could cause difficulty with non linear movement at the extremes of servo travel. Does everyone agree with this? Next, think about how the servo generates its turning power or torque usually expressed as either Kg.cm (European) or oz in (US or imperial). The closer in to the servo shaft you connect your pushrod, the greater the power of the servo. The other end of the connection to the flying surface is then used to achieve the desired movement. Always start with 100%, or even the full 120%, of servo movement to produce the maximum control surface movement you want. What this does is reduces the effect of any backlash, or slop, in servo gears, and maximises the servo’s power. Use the Tx ATV to fine tune your set up. You also do not want to have oversize holes for your pushrod to rattle around in as you are introducing more unnecessary slop into the control run. Avoid Z bends to terminate your pushrods – yes they are quick way of connecting up but pushing them in enlarges the servo arm or control horn hole – leading to more slop! A simple 90 deg bend with a swing keeper is the way to go or else use the correct size quick link to ensure a solid slop free linkage. For trad aeros, you’ll find that 10 deg to 15 deg is all you’ll need. That’s not much movement but it’s enough when you have the CG in the right place. So the rule is mount your pushrod as close in to the servo shaft as possible and position the pushrod in the appropriate hole on the control surface horn to give you the desired movement. Why use degrees and not mm or inches of movement? Depends on how long (measured along the direction of flight not spanwise – if you see what I mean) your control surface is how much movement you need to measure at its end. Measured in degrees it’s the same for long or short surfaces. OK but how to convert the degrees into movement at the trailing edge of the control surface. If we call the control surface length L and the movement we want M, and the angle is A then the movement we want is: M = L x sinA (where A is in degrees) Sin 10 = 0.17 Sin 15 = 0.26 Sin 20 = 0.34 So M = L x 01.7 (for 10 deg) and if you have a control surface of 25 mm M = 25 x 0.17 = 4.25 mm It’s not much movement, is it! You can, of course, have more movement and set up your low rates to give you this very small movement or else use exponential to give you the same effect over quite a lot of stick movement depending on the amount of expo you use. For 3D, you’ll want up to 45 degs of movement each way on a huge control surface. You will probably see that there is an inherent problem with having an aeroplane set up to do both disciplines – you have to trade off servo power (or buy more powerful servos) to avoid blowback and give you the speed of movement required on a 3D surface. Not that it can’t be done, just that you have to compromise. OK. That’s enough for the first bit. Any comments gratefully received.

Hi. Having pretty much taught myself to fly aerobatics, I thought it would be helpful for others who either want to start flying aerobatics or to improve their aerobatic flying to have a thread to which they could turn for help and advice. RCM&E is currently carrying a series written by Shahid Banglawala on how to fly the Clubman Schedule and while Shahid invites you to email him any questions it may be that some folks would rather use a forum such as this one to discuss the issues they are having with achieving the desired aerobatic shapes in the sky! Many of the photos in Shahid’s articles show quite humble airframes – the pilot remains the biggest factor in achieving a good aerobatic performance. While there are specialist forum for aerobatic pilots, I thought there might be a large number of users of this forum who would find this thread useful and that we could build up a body of information that you could dip into as you progressed. Eventually, you might decide to graduate to other more specialist forum but I would hope that you’d keep an eye on this one. One of the key barriers to getting into aerobatics is the fear that it will be very expensive. The reality is that many sport aerobatic models can be made to perform a great deal better than you would think by careful trimming. You can, of course, buy a 50 size aerobat and you will be amazed at how well they fly – but that’s not necessary. I started with a Wot4, which I still have and still fly and it’s great fun. Specialist aerobatic aircraft don’t have to cost much more than the standard ARTF sports model. Alternatively, thanks to the resurgence in interest in vintage aerobatic aircraft under the UK CAA there is an increasing number of plans being dusted off and brought back into use or else you can buy something like Ripmax’s Bullet if you prefer the ARTF route. So, I hope we’ll get lots of contributions from those seeking and those offering information on getting into aerobatics.

Masher I now use a mask with two activated carbon canisters (you can buy the mask and canisters in B&Q) and have no further problems when using Cyano even in less well ventilated areas. I am also considering using the mask when using epoxy. I've also found that the mask helps to cut down on hayfever attacks when pollen count is high but you do look a sight wandering around wearing a mask!

David, could you add "When flying in Competition". That's when I get nervous - especially the first flight!

Having read the very interesting thread on classic aerobat photos and come across some harsh words on today's F3A scene I was going to put my viewpoint but as was rightly said, it needs a new thread. I decided I wanted to enter competition aerobatics and after trying for 10 years to get my B finally achieved it when I retired! My first taste of competition was at the Seb Art Cup competition held alongside the first European Cup F3A competition. The rules were that you could only enter if you'd never flown in a competition before. So, I took my Wot4 along and was faced by mostly Seb Art Angel 50s or Winds S 50s. There were 10 competitors and I made 7th place with my Wotty. Yes it was a bit nerve wracking but also great fun and I learned a lot. I also saw for the first time proper F3A machines being flown by the best UK and European pilots - what a revelation. I want some of that I thought. Well, the GBR/CAA has been extremely helpful to me. There is no sign of elitism and you couldn't meet a more helpful or likeable group. So, I would be really interested in knowing what has triggered all the negative views that have been expressed. Cost of entry to fly in Clubman is - take your current aerobatic plane along and compete. Yes, there are not many in each of the lower classes but that's a direct result of folk thinking they need to be super pilots to fly in a comp. You become a much better pilot by flying in competition and you certainly reduce your crash rate which saves a good deal of money during the year! I have run 2 New Pilot Open Days under the GBR/CAA banner and got financial help from my local Area Committee. Experienced GBR/CAA pilots come along to mentor the newbies. The 20 pilots who entered these found them to be a great learning experience and at least half of the last NPOD would have entered the next Competition - sadly that had to be cancelled. The point about trying to get more pilots involved is that we can then have more local competitions and thus build up the number of competitors who will then swell the ranks at the Nats and perhaps we will need more than 1 flight line. I appreciate that the allure of some of the classic aerobatic designs is that they are cheaper than having to shell out for today's ARTF F3A composite planes but this is not always the case. I should say that I have a Gangster 75 in build and a Taurus kit waiting for my recently acquired Veco 45 both of which I intend to bring to a UKCAA event in 2014. However, in the class in which I'm currently flying, Masters (one down from FAI P), the winner was flying an Angel 50. Bears out Terry's point that the most important factor is the pilot. You could probably get a new Angel 50 up and running for around £300 if you make maximum use of some of the new Turnigy motors and ESCs. Furthermore, Extreme Flight entered the market with a cheap 2 m F3A machine, the Vanquish, which I bought and got airborne with all new stuff for £1,250. Yes, that's expensive but probably equates to the loss of 4 decent sport aerobatic models in the year - something that is quite common in today's climate. So, it is sad that people express views based on what they think about other parts of the sport without finding out what it's actually like today. Other countries have thriving F3A scenes but for some reason we seem to have shrunk. I know this is something that the GBR/CAA is actively discussing with a view to improving the situation but the best way to improve it is for people to come along and have a go at flying in today's F3A competitions without first going out and spending a load of dosh. A well trimmed reasonably aerobatic airframe (Acrowot for example) could be a jolly good performer in Clubman but you do need to practice! OK - stand back for the incoming. Peter

Tony Have you checked the wing and fuselage for any twists? If you have any then you will have a constantly changing trim condition depending on airspeed. You will be able to trim for one speed and then increasing or reducing airspeed will cause the aircraft to go out of trim. Side thrust, as you mentioned in your first post, could also contribute to this. Easy way to check, once you've resolved the twisted issue, is to pull to the vertical and keep going straight up and see if the aircraft will track straight for at least the first 5 secs. If it goes left you will need more right thrust and vice versa. Good luck. Peter

What I find best is to think about what I want the aeroplane to do or not do. For example, a Wot4 has very strong secondary effect of rudder i.e. left rudder leads to an almost instant left roll. If you want to do a slow roll and use the rudder as well as elevator to get a nice axial roll, you need to kill the secondary effect of rudder. To put it another way, if you apply rudder you just want a yaw and not a roll. Say you apply left rudder and the aircraft rolls left then you want your ailerons to compensate by rolling right so that the rudder induced roll is neurtralised and you just get yaw. Does that make sense? Well, first rule of mixing is to make the mix value high so that you can see if your mix is going in the right direction. For the rudder to aileron mix you only need a very small amout of mixing - usually less than 5% so it's important you set it the right way - how do I know? The second rule of mixing is to use a switch to bring it in and to try it out at a safe height! I find that helps with when I'm trying to put a mix in place. If this helps fine, if not just ignore this.

Skippy, you raise a good point about the fear of trying new manoeuvres with a crunchie model. I see people trying to fly new manoeuvres when they are not 2 mistakes high and when they get disorientated part way through they either frighten themselves or prang the aeroplane. Most problems can be resolved if you have enough height to begin with. I was going to say all problems but there will always be equipment or structural failure to which there may be no solution. So, stay high till you are confident that you will not need the safety margin. On the main topic, I think that people who fly on their own will find this Apprentice a god send. For club pilots, it may help but if you have a good instructor they are better. They can at least tell you why you got into that odd position rather than just relying on the Panic button and not knowing why you ended up in that position and what was done to recover the situation. A further thought concerns a learner who cannot get out to fly regularly. I think these aids would help them to feel at least they are making progress and so encourage them to keep flying. However, they must wean themselves off these aids before they can be considered safe to fly solo or attempt an A test.

Too true. The Irvine 53 is, in my opinion, the best of the breed at that size - OS included! Which is odd because OS manufacture it. That's probably why it's not back in production, although I did hear that the factory was demolised in the Japanese tsunami. Any one know if OS are going to re-start Irvine 53 production?

Pete Just to say that I'm using Win 7 (32 bit) and it's running both Chrome (Version 28.0.1500.95 m) and IE (ver 10). I have not cleared my cache but everything is working fine in both browers. Of course, the majority of users out there will be wondering what the problem which is not to say I don't sympathise with those who have the problem. It's so annoying when things go wrong with software provided by the big boys because you never know whether they have or are working on a fix, who's got the fix and when they are going to implement it!! Leaves the small fry, to try and produce the work rounds. Well done on the way you are handling these issues. Peter

If you use JR servos, they all come with a warning not to use 5 cell Receiver packs as the voltage will be too high. Some people get away with it but I found that with a 5 cell pack my JR servos just chattered away. They were fine on a 4 cell pack.

Hi Chris Yes, washout will reduce the total amount of lift but it will be a trade off where you will avoid a tip stall as the centre section will stall first. So provide your approach speed has a decent margin over your stalling speed you will be fine. Obviously, carry out a check of stalling speed at height and do several practice approaches. Pick a day with a bit of breeze and your ground speed will be signficantly reduced so the higher airspeed won't look so ....high!

Chris An easy way to achieve washout is to set both ailerons up slightly when at neutral - if you see what I mean. Try the stall at a sensible height with different amounts of up aileron to determine an optimum position for your "washout".