Jump to content

Romeo Whisky

Members
  • Posts

    1,051
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Romeo Whisky

  1. 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"
  2. 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!
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Hi Rich, Well it was some time ago and it was given to my grandson who still has it. However, from memory it had a small Emax 1200kv motor powered by a 2S 500 battery, driving a GWS slo-fly 8x4 prop. ESC was 5A I think. AUW was definitely under 250g. I bought him a cheapy (but surprisingly good) FlySky TX/RX so no doubt it had a very small 4ch RX. Hope that helps.
  6. The wing is a one-piece Depron, but it was one I had bought years earlier which was sold as a spare/replacement for some other model. I had never used it so it was lucky I just happened to still have it, and it was ideal for this. As you see it is R/E only, and the pipe-lagging is reinforced internally with a long piece of square-section balsa. It flew really well. The original thread is here, and several others posted some excellent lightweight home-builds you might like.
  7. It was some time ago, but I built a model with a pipe-lagging fuselage for my grandson. The thread topic was about home-built models under 250g The photo from the post is here ... https://forums.modelflying.co.uk/sites/3/images/member_albums/42451/841817.jpg (I called it lobster because of its colours and because it had to be lobbed into the air!)
  8. And another of my favourites from Ken Dodd ... Patient: Doctor, I need your help. I can't sleep at night because my wife thinks she's a refrigerator. Doctor: Well that's easy - just use ear-plugs. Patient: That's no use. Doctor: Why not? Patient: You don't seem to understand - the problem is she sleeps with her mouth open. It's the light that keeps me awake!
  9. Here's one from the late, great Ken Dodd .... A young man of very small stature became very depressed about it and went to see his doctor. You mustn't get depressed about that, said his doctor. Remember: "Giant oak trees from little acorns grow". Just keep reminding yourself that you're a little acorn. The young fellow had never thought of that before and immediately felt better. "Yes" he said "I am a little acorn". When he went outside the sun was shining, and he decided to stroll back through the park. And a squirrel ate him!
  10. Mum: Johnny - why are you so late home from school today? Johnny: I got detention 'cos Billy was smokin' Mum: If it was Billy who was smoking, how come you got detention? Johnny: 'Cos it was me that set him afire
  11. Many years ago I happened to be in a health-food shop in Castleford and the customer before me was a little elderly yorkshire lass wearing a headscarf. "'Ave you got any honey luv?" she asked. The shop assistant, trying to be helpful, said "Yes, we have Scottish Heather, Mexican Cherry Blossom and Australian Eucalyptus". The old lady looked thoughtful for a moment and then said "'Aven't you got any BEE's honey?"
  12. This thread seems to be degenerating into chatter - can we stick to the thread topic please, and just post funnies?
  13. Here are a couple more variants you might like. I've had the original grey EPS one and the white Elapor one - both great models. I took the photos but these models in the photos are not mine however.
  14. Thanks for the responses. The reason I decided to check the IR of my 8 3S 2200 backs (All Blue Zippys) was because they did not seems to be giving the flight duration I thought they should, and were quite warm-to-hot after landing. I bench-tested them all using my Tornado wattmeter, on a standard setup I have using a 1000kv motor and 10x5 prop running at full throttle, and monitored the start and run-time pack voltage and sustained Amps and Watts until they had each drawn 650 mAh from the pack during each test which took just over 2 minutes to draw the 650mAh. I tested the IR both before and after the test runs. All the packs were slightly warm after the test runs but the IR readings before and after were mostly the same (see above) or increased by only a point or two. I then recharged the batteries using the charge/balance program on my charger, and in every case the recharge input was higher than the 650mAh which the wattmeter had indicated that they had used. Obviously the higher recharge input can be accounted for to some extent by the balancing process, but if the wattmeter is correct none of the packs has a true capacity anywhere near the 2200 mAh they are rated at. Can't make up my mind whether to scrap them all, ... but then again packs have got expensive!
  15. I recently acquired a new LiPo charger which has the facility to measure internal resistance of each cell and the battery as a whole. As is so common in aeromodelling equipment manuals, it tells me how to take the measurement, but says nothing at all about what the readings mean in terms of battery performance. I tested all my 3S 2200 batteries which are about six years old but fly OK and most gave individual cell IRs as 001.01.001 with a battery reading of 3. A couple were very slightly higher. Of course I realise that the lower the reading the better, but what is regarded as a high IR reading and what is a normal IR reading?
  16. Hi William - did you manage to obtain the Flying Flea you want? My dear old school-friend built a little beauty of it, but he sadly died last year. His widow still has all his models but if you're still after one you'll need to respond quickly. You do not say where you're located, but you would need to collect it from Sheffield. Please let me know whether you're interested or not. RW
  17. I echo all that has been said. With the right trainer model and a patient tutor you'll soon fly better than ASX does! You'll also feel a great sense of accomplishment which ASX can never bestow on you. We can all lose orientation once in a while, especially when flying silhouettes against a cloudy sky. The thing to remember is that the model will still be going in the direction you last pointed it in. You might momentarily skip a heartbeat as a novice and it can be scary, but don't panic. If the model has been properly trimmed it should keep flying (even hands-off) to give you enough time to recover your sense of orientation. Of course it's also true that nearly all models revert to kit form eventually as we push the envelope of our flying ability, so if you've got cash burning a hole in your pocket, buy a spare trainer model rather than gadgetry and put the occasional write-off down to experience.
  18. You might like to see this brilliant electric TWIN-MOTOR Acrowot conversion by Derek Latimer of the Dumfries Model Flying Club. He's also adapted it to fly offwheels or floats. There is a video of the maiden flights of this model in the Featured Models album of our club website, here .... https://dmfc.org.uk/galleries/video or on YouTube here .... https://youtu.be/EZqRvh4HDGs
  19. We have some excellent scratch builders at our Club and you can view videos of some of them in the Featured Models album here https://dmfc.org.uk/galleries/video Our latest video features a brilliant Acrowot® conversion to electric twin-motors, and modified for both wheeled u/c and as a floatplane.
  20. Hi Rich, If you mean the baby Lidl glider the three servos are all Turnigy TGY-1370A 3.7g. It's a tight squeeze under the cockpit with an Orange Spektrum R410X 4ch receiver and 6A ESC. Motor is a 1712-2290Kv 9.2g from Hobbyking, driving an EP4530 prop. Battery is a Turnigy Nanotech 2S 260 which sits inside the scooped out cockpit cover. Wingspan of the baby Lidl glider is 480mm. AUW 110g Hope that's helpful.
  21. Here's the smaller Lidl glider (Baby Flidl - £3.99). Flies great and even handles moderate wind well. Car sponges give an idea of size.
  22. Hi leccyflyer, Thanks for the feedback. You'd be made most welcome if ever you'd like to visit our club. Happy landings in '23 Richard
  23. Hi Leccyflyer - I was also flying electric BL (before LiPos) in fact the large club I was with at that time were all electric only, plus slope gliders. In fact I have never flown an i/c model. I didn't say decent performance was impossible - the early Multiplex pusher Pico-Jets were virtually mini-rockets - and there were some small Balsacraft warbird models in the club too, but none with retracts. But we flew off a grass sports field and I never saw an ROG take-off at the Club until LiPos and brushless motors arrived. Some GWS styrene foam models came with spindly plastic fixed wheels but hardly anybody fitted them. Clearly personal experiences will vary, but In any case the brief history is not the main purpose and thrust of the article, and it provides an adequate flavour of early electric flight and the essential contrasts between electric and i/c in those early days.
  24. I would suggest you just add a link to our Club website as there are other articles, videos etc there that your members might also find interesting. Check out the Articles webpage. Dumfries Model Flying Club https://dmfc.org.uk
  25. I wrote a booklet on the Basics of Electric Flight which can be downloaded from our Club website. The link is here:- https://dmfc.org.uk/downloads/electricFlight.pdf
×
×
  • Create New...