Peter Jenkins

What surprised me was the tone of astonishment that a model aircraft can weigh up to 150 Kg. The other point seems to be that the only way to get civil air information to the military is to raise a NOTAM but the system doesn't allow existing UK AIP information to be put into a NOTAM. A case of heads I win, tails you lose. Since there are going to be increasing numbers of drones flying below 400 ft and the military are allowed to low fly just about anywhere in the UK at not below 250 ft, it sounds like someone needs to find a way of getting civil air information to the military otherwise we will see an upsurge of AirProx reports and in the worst case a collision.

This morning made the 4th time I've managed to get in 1/2 day's flying in January! That being said, the cloud base was low and marred by even lower clumps of cloud. I had wanted to check on the KE mix, it's no more than 1 to 3 clicks, and to sort out the KE loop mix so that I don't have to lean on the elevator or aileron stick to get a perfectly planar half loop. However, the cloud was sufficiently low to stop that little game but I did work out a tweak to two so that might have done it. The next thing was to work on the roll combination. That is 3 x 1/4 roll in the same direction. So a definite line between each element and then 3 x 1/4 rolls in the opposite direction. Between rolls in different directions the change of direction must be immediate - FAI Aerobatic rules. However, after the first flight, when I disappeared into cloud clumps occasionally, the cloud all seemed to get much lower so I sat for an hour waiting for an improvement. Eventually, one came and I got in 3 more flights before I ran out of time. Only 2 of the roll combinations were dead level with no variation in direction of travel so more practice needed.

Will you be doing that at the field Outrunner or when you come home. I write my comments after I get the aircraft back to the pits as if I leave it till I get home I'll probably forget key parameters. But that just might be my old brain or rather memory bank!

I'd use between 0.5 and 1 deg. 5 deg is far too much and would need a very tail high attitude to fly level. 2 deg is too much.

Lot of truth in that Geoff. I still think Word Perfect 5.1 was the best word processing package I ever used. Lightning fast and the reveal/hid codes trick allowed you to sort formatting problems almost as quickly as the WYSISYG of Word, Only issue is, there is no way of knowing when it's a security patch or one of the more fanciful ones!

That's what I used to use on my 2 m aerobatic aircraft. I just used a Jeti spark arrestor and a 4 mm plug on the positive lead that routed out through the fuselage. It was a requirement at the World Champs in Muncie in 2011 that the aircraft had to be disarmed when collected after landing. Never had a problem with a 4 mm plug and socket connector coming loose. I don't do that anymore as it's just as easy to remove the canopy (slide back 2 canopy latches and lift off) and disconnect the Lipo to ESC connection. Of course, you could splash out on a Jeti electronic battery switch. There are 2 versions. One up to 100 A current and one up to 200 A current flow. That will allow you to arm and disarm the aircraft via a Tx switch. They do cost a lot of money though! Then again, they are designed to work with high current.

Geoff, my router supplier gold me not to turn the router off overnight as that'svwhen they upgrade the software router. You may want to check your router's sofware standard with what your supplier tells you is the latest version just in case your router has not been updated.

The CAA cannot get a VTOL airfield to materialise anywhere. The airfield will need planning permission and there will be lots of NIMBYs who stick their spanners in the works. Even for a helicopter landing into a field you do need to get permission from the owner and let the Police know. If you have a heli pad in your garden the same goes for planning permission. Be good if you didn't just throw out misinformation like this RG.

It wasn't a documentary. It was written by insiders to flag up the constant battle between the Civil Service and Ministers. Lesser ministers could be bamboozled whereas the really good ones ruled the roost. Trouble is, there aren't too many good ones!

I cannot see the relevance to model flying. We operate from a fixed location within a small chunk of airspace. We do not go cross country unless we are after some form of record flight in which case we will take appropriate action. Am I missing something?

My re-registration has worked fine. I got an email from the CAA last night telling me that my OPID registration was secured for another year and gave me my details with which I agreed and that are the same as on the BMFA Membership site. Just renewed via the Club annual membership fee payment. Works well for me.

This is usually required for flight crew licencing. Since we who fly model aircraft/drones for sport and pleasure are unlikely to be required to hold a FCL I would think that we will be exempted from this. If, we ever get to being classed as being Flight Crew then the hobby side of the sport will be done but then so will a lot of other odd aviation sports.

Well, I made it 36,800 miles per second but it does depend on which frequency of red and blue you use.

No, blue shift as you are heading towards it!

Actually it was nearer 15 mins be flight so, on that basis, I make it 20 hours. The other point I would make is that I only ever flew my Wot 4 during that time and only ever flew the B schedules. It was a case of needing the B as soon as possible so that I could get into competitive aerobatics. I would never have know this had I not kept the notes that I did. The notes also showed that the most difficult manoeuvres were the 2 rolls. Eventually, I set up a low rate on the ailerons that gave a constant rate of roll with the stick hard over, and then I only had to work on timing the elevator application. A bit later on, when I was challenged on the very low roll rate being more akin to a slow roll, I measured the roll rate and found that rolling right took 2.5 secs per roll while rolling left took 3 secs per roll. Rolling with the engine's torque was faster! I would never have found that out since the difference in roll rate was not at all obvious to the eye! Funny what you learn with a bit of data!

How fast do you need to approach a red traffic light for it to appear green? Something for the physicists!

Coming from a full size flying and gliding background, when I re-started model flying back in 2000, it felt perfectly natural to kept a log of all my training flights. This had date, model, and any comments e.g. which lesson and how well I thought I'd done. Once I went solo, I maintained the log and still do. I record trim setup changes whenever they occur e.g. CG position, wing incidence, rates, mixes as well as comments on how I flew and what I am having problems with - oh and if the wind speed / direction. When I passed my FW B, I was able to look back and see that I had flown 80 flights with almost always 2 B schedules per flight so a total of 160 Bs flown to get to the consistency I needed to feel sure I would pass. I did at my first attempt but was asked to re-do one of the rolling manoeuvres before the Examiner was happy. That's a useful story to tell folks who want to get a B. OK, so I'm a slow learner but I was starting from a low level of skill. For my electric flight, I have a strike off sheet that goes from 1 to 100 so that I know how many cycles that pack has had. One diagonal means the pack has been discharged and a cross, or 2nd diagonal, that the pack is fully charged. I also keep a record at home for each flight pack or how much charge went in, the IR and the cell voltage difference. This also provides a cross check with the battery pack strike off list. I used to do an annual tally of which aeroplane I'd flown, including number of flights and total duration and kept a running total of total flights and hours flown. That fell away once I focused on flying almost just 1 aircraft, my current competition bird. I find it useful to see how many schedule flights I've flown in the run up to competitions and for the year. It's never as many as I would like, of course. I just use paper records and print off the forms as I need them. I find that filling in the log after every flight helps me to think about how I flew and what I need to work on. It's useful sometimes to look back at previous history but that happens only very rarely. Why do it? Habit!

Tower Hobbies is a USA-based retailer. In case you haven't noticed, we have different laws in this country. Still, as you can't be bothered to learn anything it's not surprising that you want to view the world according to your views. The rest of us are well aware that a Riot is not a park flyer.

Well, I'm staggered with that post Arthur. Firstly, the IC engine that Toto started with isn't complex and nor are his other electric models. So how did you form that opinion? Secondly, one of the great aspects of model flying is that you get to learn so many new things. You don't need an engineering or electronic background to want to learn enough about your model and its equipment so that you are able to extract the optimum performance from them and yourself. As I understand it, you are keen to fly a model aeroplane but have no real interest in the topic. Is that right? Toto is showing a lot of interest in trying to understand what is going on. Good for him.

Yes, so I understand. A retrograde step in my view and increases the impsct of a msjor cyber attack. The Russians have a track record in this type of attack so I hope GCHQ has the antidote to hand when this happens in about 8-10 years time.

The whole point of a separate land line is that it has its own power and uses a separate run from the electricity wires - at lease out in the shires! If I lose electrical power, my land line still works. I have never had both the electricity supply and the land line fail simultaneously although a major storm could do that. I don't always get good mobile reception in my house so when the electricity goes and I lose my BT Hub, I'm left with trying to cope with an iffy mobile signal. Thank goodness for my land line is what I say as that's how I report my electricity outage to the supplier. Dual redundancy is good!

To me, the scary stuff is what it's all about. Model railways had no adrenaline rush for me once I've run the train round the oval track a few times. No one like crashing their models but that's how you learn quite often. If you find that you are losing your aircraft in the same way every time then you are not learning and perhaps flying model aircraft isn't for you. But there are only a very few like that. Toto seems to be having a wide range of problems but learning from each. Well done Toto and, although it's not the way I went about things as I only had one I/C trainer that I had to repair a few times before I completely destroyed it, I can understand his desire to get on quickly. When I came back into aeromodelling, my background helped me enormously. I had built and flown free flight, control line and single channel radio control while I was at school and even built a single channel radio kit (with valves!) and a solid state proportional radio set from a kit of parts before heading into full size flying. On my return, I understood all that was involved in building models, running engines and the radio had gone from iffy to plug in and switch on and away you went. It certainly surprised my instructor when I managed to badly damage my trainer fuselage by losing it at 5 ft on approach (rolled the wrong way!) to see me the next morning with a fully repaired and decorated model raring to go. Past experience was worth its weight in gold.

The extra information is what anyone who has already built a model would know. Mike was catering for those who hadn't ever built anything - I grant you that in that respect your comment is true but you didn't need that level of information as you are an experienced builder.

Rather unkind Arthur. We are all different in how we approach things. Also, few clubs allow complete beginners to teach themselves by crashing. That's not safe for the other club members.

I think the point Mike makes is that there are many model flyers today who have never built anything other than assembling an ARTF and sometimes not even that as you can just bolt a foamie together, charge the flight pack and go and fly. Hence, the very detailed building instructions that I hope will entice more readers to have a go at building Chilli Breeze. Flying aerobatics with the Chilli Breeze is something else and hence his kind flagging up of my book.