Romeo Whisky

Cataract surgery is a modern miracle with one of the highest success rate of any operation. I could easily read the bottom line on the eye test chart the very next morning! What will probably also amaze you is how vivid colours are immediately after the op. Suggest you go for long vision lenses, and just use cheap ready-readers for close work after the op.

Really depends what it is you're doing, and where you want to do it. Cheap car-wash sponges on a table are great for resting a model on while you're working on it. Sometimes I use an ironing board. But if you want to test-run the motor for, say a watt-meter test or range test you could knock up a restrainer for a cheap work-mate type stand like this which I use for all my models, foam and built-up.  This is for home of course.  Not ideal for field work unless you've got a big van! Edited By Romeo Whisky on 04/10/2017 12:09:56 Edited By Romeo Whisky on 04/10/2017 12:10:31

A heavy landing is when you can take the model home from the field in the same number of pieces it arrived in. A crash is when the model reverts to kit form on landing.

Here in SW Scotland, this is the third or fourth flying season where strong (and often gusty) winds have seriously impacted on flying opportunities. This year it is virtually 1 day flying followed by 10-14 unflyable, which is getting very frustrating! (Please don't suggest slope flying as most scottish roads run through the glens - not up the mountains and I'm not up to mountaineering!) I fly Spektrum, so I'm really asking my colleagues out there for their experiences of flight stabilisers (ASX636, EagleTree, Orange etc). The main branded ones aren't cheap, but most claim to facilitiate flying in windy conditions. Of course it's really the landings that are scariest part of flying in gusty winds, so are flight stabiliser gyros the answer? What is the real world experience of these gizmos?

As a BMFA Country member living in Scotland and a member of a Scottish (SAA) Club, I wonder how that will be covered. I'd prefer to stay as a BMFA member because the BMFA Magazine is well worth the extra £4 annual fee, and the SAA seems to tell its members nothing about what's going on. However, maybe I'm an old cynic, but I smell money £££ and big business behind all this. The safety incidents have been so few and inconsequential (thankfully) so far and no amount of legislation can ever stop the ignorants, the idiots and the evil-intended. However I noted that the news articles all quoted the "drone business" in terms of £££multi-millions, and that certainly is far more than us aeromodellers can account for. We all know about Amazon's plans and desires in this context, and large commercial enterprises and government agencies are also waking up to the lucrative potential of aerial surveying/surveillance and drones. Can't help thinking that they don't want hobbyists in their way and want the lower airspace for themselves. Otherwise the ridiculously low model weight and height limits don't make much sense. My other take on this relates to the colossal difference between England/Wales and Scotland regarding their "Right to Roam" laws. In England/ Wales the right to roam is restricted to designated places, whereas the right to roam laws in Scotland define where you CAN'T roam. It's a far more sensible approach, and incidentally far easier to map, manage and police. (How will they cope with clubs needing to relocate as their sites become housing estates?) If this approach were to be applied to UAV flying, the country members and slope flyers and waterplane flyers could breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Our's is a friendly club! If I'm using the dolly I just ask one of my mates to retrieve the dolly from the runway after the launch, and with no fuss at all they kindly do it. It's a simple system and it works perfectly. We also offer to hand-launch models for each other when necessary. That's what friends are for. Why doesn't TS2 just offer to retrieve the dolly from the runway instead of moaning about it.