Romeo Whisky

We are a small club (about 30 members) in rural Scotland affiliated to both BMFA and SAA. We've had about five new members in the past year, mostly in their early seventies and largely replacing members who have left or died. Our club flying site is on a very narrow country road with passing places, but it is well used as a rat-run between two main roads and by cyclists, so that has been helpful as people often stop by to watch when we're flying. As Club PRO I have tried numerous methods to promote the club. Our website (dmfc.org.uk) has a monthly newsletter with lots of photos and I have managed to get a couple of articles in local newspapers each year, whenever we've had an event worth publicising, and mostly they have used my wording in which I always include an offer of a free trial flight, free dual-control tuition for new members and a reference to our website. Realistically it has to be the website which actually moves folk from vague interest to starting the ball rolling. I have found getting articles published to be quite easy if you think about it from the Newspaper's point of view. They like human interest with lots of photographs of good quality. They like the photos of people to be indentified. And they need the article be "newsworthy" and not just a blatant attempt at free advertising - (don't waste their time). Think carefully about wording and make it succinct with good grammar and spelling. I recommend sending the article as a .pdf file with captioned photos, but always send the photos as separate attachments as well. We did an exchange visit with a local Mens Shed last year. Half-a-dozen came along and all had a free trial flight or two, and all said how much they enjoyed it. It was a good exercise for the Club, and drew a high level of engagement from our members, but it has not led to any new members. I have found posters in supermarkets, libraries and community halls to be a waste of time. We have an air museum locally and have had stands at their special days too. These have generated lots of visits to our stand, and some lengthy chats but no new members. Although engaging youngster with the hobby is desirable long-term, I think we must face the fact that our prime market is newly-retired men, and that is the demographic from where almost all our recent members have come. Incidentally, we hardly ever get enquiries from people who've just bought a quad-drone they want to fly, and mostly they seem to just want a few quick pointers and don't join. Sadly the majority of website enquiries on our website come from folk who want to donate or sell old models - theirs or those of deceased relatives. Draw your own conclusions from that.

Here's mine - flew it again on Wednesday. Flies a dream.

Sorry guys - not listed in main features but should have scrolled down the page!

Trawling through the latest Spektrum TX range I was surprised that voice alerts no longer seem to be a feature of the DX or NX range. If so, this is a major retrograde step in my opinion. The step up to the IX range is a massive price jump, and with voice alerts available on much cheaper branded sets, I think Spektrum may be building in features few people want or need in the IX range, and neglecting some really useful basic stuff that most flyers would appreciate having in their "bread and butter" range. If my old well-loved DX9 packed up I doubt I'd stay with Spektrum now.

I remember a little song my grandfather used to sing, over 70 years ago:- I called on a lady, her name was Miss Brown She was having a bath so she couldn't come down I said "Slip on something, be down in a tick" She slipped on the soap and my word she came quick

One of our members has one and there is a video of it in the Videos Gallery on our Club website at https://dmfc.org.uk Look in the "Featured Models" album of the Video Gallery webpage. There are also several other models featured in the Video Gallery that you might enjoy watching.

Thanks guys - here is another angle on it ...

Can anyone identify what this model is please?

The little girl had recently attended a funeral and was looking very thoughtful as she came into the kitchen. "Mummy ..." she said "is it really true that people come from dust and return to dust?" "Yes Darling, that is true. Why do you ask?" The little girl looked very serious as she replied: "Well I've just looked under my bed, and I reckon somebody's just coming or just going."

A little boy had been reading about eskimos fishing through a hole in the ice, so decided he would try it. He took his rod and a spade, and was just about to dig into the ice when a loud booming voice suddenly shouted from nowhere "There are no fish under the ice!" The little boy jumped and looked around, but couldn't see anyone, so he raised his spade again - and once again the great booming voice spoke out: "I told you there are no fish under the ice!" The little boy was now quite afraid, and still seeing nobody around he called out: "Is that you God?" Then the booming voice spoke again ... "No, it's the ice-rink manager speaking on the Tannoy"

Futura57 Post - See above Well if you ever have a problem with bladder retention due to enlarged prostate, it's almost certain you'll be logging visits to the WC - and recording volumes passed too!

Yes, I do - across several interlinked spreadsheet workpages - although I seem to be regarded rather as the club geek for doing so. I also have a separate "static" data sheet for each model with details of its costs, electronics, AUW, TX set-up, bench-test voltmeter results, maiden flight date etc. I also file away the data sheets/manuals for every model, motor, ESC, RX etc., and these are invaluable when items are transferred from one model to another, or when I sell a model on. All my batteries are numbered and by logging every fight in terms of model, date, battery and flight-time, it means I know how many filed visits and flights I've made each year and can compare them with previous years including YTD comparisons. I know how many flights each of my models has had and I divide the original in-the-air cost by the number of flights to work out what each model's (reducing) cost-per-flight is. (It is surprising how much some models cost per flight on this basis). I can also see that I have some quite expensive models that I fly much more rarely than I might have imagined. I also log flight times for each model and generate cumulative airtimes. I number and annotate each of my flight batteries and record the date, source, weight and original cost. I therefore know how many flights and flight-times for each each battery, and ensure that I can balance the usage of the batteries, to avoid having ageing batteries that have hardly flown and others which are overworked. I also know which brands perform better and for longer, and the cost per flight of each battery too. By recording battery charging data also, I can easily calculate the optimum TX countdown timer settings for each model, charger usage, and battery charge efficiency as they age. It might sound as though this is an awful lot of work, but in reality it takes about 10 seconds after each flight to record the details, and about another 10 seconds back home to type the details into the spreadsheet in a simple day-book list. All the sub-analysis and calculations are done automatically by the spreadsheet which is what they're designed for. Admittedly setting up the spreadsheet from scratch will have taken a little while - but that was a one-off job, no doubt done on one of those many wet and windy days when we couldn't fly. I designed a simple log book for recording flights at the field and battery charging back home - attached.

A word of warning - I wasn't happy about the 40A rating of the installed ESC with 4S batteries, so I put a wattmeter on it and sure enough it went way over 40A when I powered up, so I bought a 60A ESC to replace it. I also didn't like the floppy inflatable tyres, and I don't own a bicycle pump, so I swapped them out for 5 inch foam ones from China. Like Ron (above post) I also thought the installed Y-leads for the wing servos were too short so replaced them with longer Y-leads. It all added some significant extra costs which was annoying as these things should have been sorted by the manufacturer, but otherwise I really like this model and it's especially great in the winter months when it benefits from the big tundra wheels on the longer and rougher grass at our club field.