Peter Jenkins

Problem is GG that China is dumping loads of stuff on us at below market rates. I sincerely hope that our leaders get a grip on the whole sale subsidy that is being given to the Chinese electric car manufacturers for example. I am as guilty as you in buying from China because it's cheaper but sometimes there is no other option as all the western companies that used to make stuff have gone to the wall helped by the Chinese. We may not enjoy such cheap prices for much longer methinks.

Woops! If you use the wrong metric units 6000 mm read as cm(!) you end up with my sums! The more numerically sharp will have noticed that the answer for the number of 50 cm or 500 mm straps you can make from a 600 cm or 6000 mm roll is actually rather more modest at 12! Sorry if I confused you. I promise to take my socks off next time when I run out of fingers!

I suffered a battery strap failure when a pack overheated and melted one of the two straps holding it in place. In the process of finding a strap of the right length, I came across this on Amazon with which you can make 30 battery straps for £7.99 delivered and, assuming a length of 50 cm for each strap, still have 4.5 m of velcro remaining! That's 26 p per battery strap. You can get 10 x 20 mm buckles here for £2.99 and make full use of that 4.5 m remaining velcro strip. The Velcro seems to have hook and loop embedded in it so it sticks to itself. I shall be using this for all my future battery strap needs, large and small!

Hi Neddy Have you read the BMFA book called a Flying Start? If not, it's worth downloading from here.. Turning comes in Module 8 of this book that is also a suitable training manual provided both student and instructor are using it. Hope you find the book useful if you have not already started using it. Peter

Hi Neddy Yes, it's very different when you are flying in the real world. For a start, you will find that your IQ drops to nearly zero as even what were simple tasks become much more difficult. The adrenaline is pumping which it never does on a simulator. As regards turning, unless you have a poorly set up aircraft, most of today's crop don't need anything other than aileron to bank and elevator to turn as that's what creates the extra lift force needed to turn the aeroplane. Using the rudder in the direction of turn will push the nose down and yaw the aircraft into the turn. Hence the phrase bank and yank. Oh yes, once you have reached the right angle of bank then centralise the ailerons. You should leave the throttle at it's setting that your instructor set for straight and level flight. If the aircraft is climbing ease off the back stick pressure and wait for the aircraft to react. That's something else that takes a bit of time to get used to. Aircraft always feel a bit behind where you want them to be. There is a slight delay but you quickly get used to this. Keep your spirits up and you've just found that flying in windy conditions is possible but hard work. Don't let wind put you off otherwise you'll be waiting for ever in this country. Good luck. Peter

I think one reason is that the pilot may not have been trained to stand still with straight ahead ponting at the middle of the field or runway in use. If you turn to face the aircraft all the time then you lose your frame of reference and any sense of where you are. If your neck has reached its comfortable turning point that tells you that you need to turn back into the right flying space.

Toto Some Clubs sign off pilots to fly solo once they have seen you fly and consider you to be a safe pilot. Most clubs though will have someone standing beside you until you have passed your A Cert or Bronze SAA Certificate and then you can fly on you own without a minder standing beside or close to you. It's very like full size flying where you can be sent off solo once your instructor thinks you are safe. But solo is a circuit around the airfield and land back - end. After that, you have more dual instruction as well as solo flying but when you are flying solo your instructor is sitting in the tower ready to give you any help you might need. You do also have to fly a navigation flight and land at a different airfield whose staff will be briefed that you are coming and are a student pilot. Once you have done all that, and you have passed your ground exams that might include passing the RT licence so you can legally use the radio, you will get your flying test. Pass that, and you become a fully fledged pilot. It's the same with the A Cert. Other Clubs will usually accept the A taken elsewhere but might just ask to see you fly or to actually fly the A test flight as a confirmation that you are safe without it being a formal test. I speak as a BMFA Qualified Instructor and Club Examiner. Cheers Peter

Toto IMHO the point at which you should feel confident to come off the buddy lead is when you don't have to think about which way to move the sticks. In order to get there, you need to be ahead of the aeroplane and ahead of the manoeuvre. That way you are not going to be surprised and potentially confused at exactly the wrong time. One of the other things your instructor should do is to put the aircraft into an unusual position and give you control having first demonstrated how recover. The icing on the gingerbread is for you to keep your eyes closed till he says "open" pick up the aeroplane, work out what it's doing and recover to level flight. That builds confidence. Finally, learn to keep the picture of what the aeroplane is doing in your minds eye and try not to lose it. Just needs you to train yourself to do that all the time from take off to landing. You do that before you get airborne so you know what you are going to do in the air.

Ah! Bad luck.

Hi Futura The 7 Kg limit has gone to 7.5 kg with fuel. The text below is from the current BMFA Handbook. ** Note: For all practical purposes the Maximum Take Off Mass or MTOM is the weight of your aircraft when it first becomes airborne on each flight. The MTOM now includes everything, including fuel, which is why the 7kg has gone up to 7.5kg and 20kg to 25kg.

Amen to that!

I flew yesterday afternoon and was a billy no mates despite the weather being very nice. Today was meant to be wet all day but as the Sun shone all morning and there was no sign on rain on the Rain App, I decided another practice session for the new aerobatic schedule for this year was indicated. Again, despite the actual weather being dry and sunny, I was a billy no mates again. I am trying to trim out the coupling in knife edge so that I don't have to touch aileron and elevator to hold the KE position in the top half of a Fig S. Yesterday's tweaking made a huge difference but today showed that there was still a bit more tweaking required at high rudder deflection. Roll on the next practice session!

North Carolina I think John.

Angels are fine as they were designed for IC or electric power. Wind S 50s were meant for electric only.

Mike I was like you. But when I got into aerobatics, not only were the electric motors more powerful than the equivalent glows, they were also very reliable and easy to use. Yes, it's a big investment in charging equipment and batteries but it is, IMHO and that of almost all who fly aerobatics in competition, the way to go. It doesn't take too much effort to get your head around this new type of propulsion. It's also a lot cheaper! I calculated that it cost me £2 per flight with my Saito 180 while it was £1 per flight with the equivalent electric setup if I got 100 cycles out of the battery. True, some packs failed at 50 cycles but some went for 200 cycles and are still going strong. There is much more variability in LiPo makes and even within the same make! I absolutely agree with Phil, the Wind will not stand up to being converted to IC. If you really don't want to go electric, why not choose something like the Crescent Bullet or how about this one? Peter

Just found the stuff I use. It's here.

Phil beat me to it!

Hi Adrian I've given up using velcro on the battery try as it can lead to a bit of a struggle to get the pack off it! I just use a bit of non-slip rubber matting and velcro straps to hold the pack in place. Cheers Peter

Trimming never seems to end! 🥴

Recently, a guy in one of the Clubs I fly at decided to give up the hobby and sold off all his fleet. My eye was caught by what looked like a pair of reduced size Chilli Breezes. It turned out that they were, in fact, Bell Hops. These are 40 in span sports electric design by Sid King for simple bell motors and 4 function R/C. It has taken me some time to sort them out and bind them to my JR DSX9 Tx that uses the Spektrum radio design. After a couple of false starts, I managed to fly both of them this afternoon. When I got to the field it looked like I was going to get a drenching but all that materialised was a few large drops of rain. So, out with the Bell Hops and check them out. I flew the yellow and red one first. I noted that the CG was towards the front of where I would have placed it. Once airborne, it needed some up elevator but no aileron or rudder trim. As I'm used to flying F3A aerobatics I found the power on this one to be a bit below par but the prop being used was on the small side so there is room to increase prop size and thus release more power. It will need a check with a Wattmeter of course and that might mean a change from the 30A ESC to a 40A one. After 6 mins of flying around relatively sedately although I did fly 2 or 3 largish loops, the flight pack showed it was still half full. So, 8 mins might be achievable with this setup. The red and blue one was next and flew a bit better especially on how the ailerons felt. But the power was well down on the first one. I will need to check the motor and ESC to see if any more power can be pulled out of them. I suspect though, that in order to get nearer to 200 W /lb I will need to change the motors and ESCs. We shall see! Talking of seeing, in the grey skies that were there for these flights, the small size of the Bell Hops made them difficult to see clearly! The biplane in the photo is a 2 m Citrin, a Wolfgang Matt design from 2013 I think. It looks fabulous, to me(!), which is why I still have it. It doesn't have quite the same aerodynamic refinement of my current 2 m mount, the B J Craft Anthem but still flies very well. The difference between the 2 smaller models and the Citrin was like chalk and cheese. Once I've sorted out the CG on the little ones they will fly a lot better but in comparison, the Citrin was rock steady in the slightly gusty conditions - you can't beat size! I managed to get in 4 practice flights with the Citrin but none of them was really acceptable. The Citrin needs a dedicated trimming session with some minor tweak to side thrust and some minor tweaks to the knife edge mix and a tad more down elevator to make the inverted spin entry a bit more positive. Peter

Hi Frank Please explain what you mean by extended time. My message was that it's OK to charge up LiPos a day or 2 days early since they will not lose any charge over that period. It's the same with LiFe and Enelope NiMH but not other NiMHs. I don't make a habit of it but if I don't use all my packs then I'll leave them fully charged for up to 2 weeks. If it's going to be longer, then I'll stick then kn my charger and didchafge to storage voltage. I've run 5S 5000 mAh 25C packs for the past 14 years and, as I'm sure you've found, some packs swell up early while others soldier on for ages even from the same label. I don't use high C packs as my flying rarely demands more than 80-85 A - that is in 10S configuration - and then only demand that for around 6 - 7 secs at any one time. That equates to around 2,800 W max demand although in my current setup the max power I've seen was 3,600 W at 98 A. That was a test early on to check with the manufacturers figure of a max 99A draw on a 23 x20 props. It did what it said on the tin! I should emphasise these readings were taken with telemetry while airborne with max/min figures stored for inspection. I no longer check max power while the aircraft is tethered on the ground as my testing showed that you can pull 25% more power out of electric motors in such circumstances. I aim for a minimum of 100 cycles per pack but have had cheap Turnigy ones reach 200 and expensive packs die at 60 cycles.

Toto, LiPos hold charge for weeks. So, charging a day or so earlier is no problem.

Hi GG - I didn't say a centre beep but a beep set at your datum power. As it happens, my datum power is at half throttle but that's a function of how much power is in my model which I use to fly the FAI aerobatic P schedule. I do have a windy setting and a calm setting as different model memories that I can switch between without hsving to rebind the Tx/Rx - a feature on my JR XG11 Tx that may or may not be available on others. However, apart from when flying FAI aerobatics I just use one datum power setting. I've never felt the need to have more than 1 datum power setting.

Toto One way of keeping the correct throttle setting is to use the facility to set a beep for your datum throttle setting. The aircraft will bebin trim at only 1 power setting. I would think that almost all of today's Tx will have this facility. With an IC engine you used the engine noise to set your datum power but with electric power it's not so audible. On my JR Tx it's called "Stick Alert" but it may well be called something different on other makes of Txs. Oh, re the procedure turn, the second turn is 270 deg. A 360 deg turn would see you heading directly away from the crowd line. Just to clarify, what you want to achieve is a 180 deg reversal of direction but to fly back along the same track. Peter

I just can't screw up the courage to stick a contact lens in my eye! To me, a procedure turn is a 90 deg turn in one direction immediately followed by a 270 deg turn in the other direction so that you reverse the direction of flight bit on the reciprocal track. The name derives from instrument flying rules in full size aviation but there are other geometries of turns.