Cuban8

Re the discouraging of visitors onto private land - this is very much because of the wishes of the land owner who may well be happy with club members to come and go, but tend to worry over anyone else. Security usually, concerns over the site being cased by thieves and fly tippers etc in my experience.

"Round here, the few clubs we have are all on private grounds so I can't plus they're miles out of town and although I drive, I am not driving miles on the off chance that someone might be flying only to get there and find it's empty. It's a bit disappointing really. Every now and then there are people talking about bringing new people into the hobby but in so many areas you can't just turn up and spectate - it's a little sad." That's a very good point.........the two clubs that I started on the aeromodelling journey as a teen both operated from public land and spectators would often turn up to watch. One club that flew from council football pitches no longer exists, but I believe that Wanstead MFC still use Wanstead Flats, which is a huge open public space in East London. I'd ride my Fizzy over and sit and watch the goings on which usually involved more in the way of fiddling with engines and collecting busted models! Didn't put me off and I was with them for a couple of years after I started work and had some cash of my own before moving on. Fifty years later and both of my current clubs operate on private land with no public access and locked gates. Casual visitors are discouraged. Looking at many club websites, I see that this sort of arrangement isn't that unusual depending on their situation. What effect this might have on recruitment is hard to say - personally I doubt it has much bearing on the issue when one consider the usual method of finding out about something is to Google it and then in the case of model flying, maybe go to the BMFA club finder or to the website of a local club or Facebook page.

I seem to recall another old brand of Balsa that was called 'Premier' - had a blue stamped on logo if memory serves. Wonder who they were and what happened to them?

A good old name from the past - do you recall the Solarbo balsa bundles that were a whole week's pocket money of 2/6d or 12 1/2p in'new' money? The small town where we lived in the 60's had a toy and model shop that didn't sell balsa, but the fishing tackle shop did sell the Solarbo balsa bundles. Maybe for making floats? Always making chuck gliders and bits and pieces with them. IIRC, Solarbo were absorbed by one of the large distributors many years ago and then simply faded away. Yes, in my experience balsa deteriorates with age but mainly, I think, influenced by how it's stored. I have wood that's over twenty five years old and in excellent condition, but has been stored in an unused bedroom which neither gets hot or cold and certainly never damp. Garages and lofts used for balsa storage usually ruins it very quickly.

Sticky label, numbers written on or printed if I can be asked.

Personally, I'm happy to have a go at most things and generally take part if I can. I'm equally happy being a spectator and enjoy model flying, full size airshows and motorcycle racing. On the subject of full size airshows, I'm lucky to have seen the very best of them in the 60's (as a young kid) and further on up to the late 90's when things started to change due to safety concerns, the security situation and spiralling costs. The only airshows we vistit regularly are the flying days at Duxford (free for IWM members) - much more relaxed affairs without all crowds and traffic problems that I just can't be doing with now. As discussed eleswhere we'll give Old Warden a shot this year as well. A good tip is to visit Duxford on the Friday before a weekend main airshow when most of the acts go through their routines for practice. Standard entry charge (free for IWM members) and none of the crowds and traffic. I guess IWM will eventually cotton on to this at some point. Airshows are becoming quite an expensive day out for a family these days as with so much else, but I do get why things have gone the way they have.

I have a couple of flying buddies who would never ever bother going to a model airshow for exactly the same reasons mentioned above. They are doers rather than watchers and that's fair enough.

I guess that any model has its limits and you found out the hard way what your particular model would not put up with. A shame with such a new purchase, but we've all been there at some time - don't beat yourself up about it too much. A lesson learned.

Refering to the setting of the feed back pot during reassembly, not so much to the centering quality of the servo as a whole. Agree, even many inexpensive servos today have a quality approaching or even equal to what was available several decades ago, and which we paid quite a bit for at the time. The old Futaba 128 and its predecessor types were around ten to fifteen pounds back in the 80's and 90's which according to Google is the equavalent to £50 - £60 today. Your transmitter issue sounds potentially very serious if it's losing it's programmed settings - really needs investigating and I'd urge you to not use the tranny if you are in any doubt about it. Annoying, but you'd not have a leg to stand on in defence should a serious accident be caused by a suspected or known fault with the gear was found to be to blame. We live in a totally different world today which is nothing like the free and easy, 'suck it and see' way of things back in the day.

One thing that might catch you out as you've not stripped a servo before is getting it to centre correctly after reassembly. You're bound to move the feedback pot from its factory set position so you'll need a servo tester set to 'centre' so that you can tweak the servo pot to the correct position if need be as you fit the gears back. Might have to take the gears of a couple of times to get it right or as close as you can. Sounds complicated, but you'll see what's happening and figure it out.

Servos are amazingly reliable and as a bonus will very often give warning signals that all is not well before a catastrophic failure. So important to check gear over and of course a preflight check every time. Witterings......have a go at dismantling the servo to see what's going on - it's not difficult but just fiddly. You've nothing to lose really. Take photos so you know how it all fits back together. Yes, the gear sets are a silly price for that servo but it'll be a good excercise to get it up and running again if indeed the gear train is at fault.

We've actually got a steel that's quite possibly a hundred years old and that we saved my wife's grandad's place when he died years ago. Never gave it a thought - will try on some blades tonight. Thanks.

Always seems very wasteful to keep renewing a dull scalpel blade - I have a length of old leather belt that I use as a strop to make scalpel and X-acto blades a bit keener which does work for a while (especially when trimming covering) but doesn't really put the blades back to as new sharpness. Any other ideas to lengthen the life of blades? They're not particularly cheap anymore.

A dozen or maybe fifteen members throughout the day yesterday - sunny with light and variable winds to about three in the afternoon when a gentle breeze began to increase the windchill and make things uncomfortable on the fingers when out of my heated gloves. Heated underjacket was worth its weight in gold. Scale, sport, leccy and IC, edf and even a couple of turbines were able to get off our well drained strip. Took a couple of 3S aerobats myself - no trouble to get going quickly as both fit in the car assembled and eight batteries give more than enough flying time followed by a quick pack away and departure. A bit soft on our slightly uphill approach track so out with the pressure washer this morning to sort out the wheels and wheel wells on the car. A great day to break up the dank and dismal past few weeks.

Agree. I haven't been to the NFC yet myself, but I've had excellent feed back from club mates who have and I have a flying buddy who lives ten minutes away from Buckminster who is very enthusiatic about what's been done there. I suppose the OW news as regards model flying events came as a shock to those not aware of the impending changes, and is a tad depressing when one considers how the hobby has lost many of its showcase events over the past few decades. It's hard for newer members in the hobby to understand just how huge and influential events like Sandown, North Weald and BMFA Nationals at Barkston etc really were in their day. Not being negative, moaning or reactionary but our hobby has been hollowed out since the turn of the millenium for all sorts of reasons, that's just a fact of life and we alter our MO to suit where we can and get on with it. Shuttleworth have just taken my SVAS membership for the coming year - For all sorts of reasons we haven't been to OW or flown at Modelair since just before Covid, but this year we will visit the museum and hopefully see at least one of their full size events. I was annoyed at the Modelair news, but on reflection, one has to be realistic and remember that Shuttleworth is no longer the quaint old rustic airfield that's run on a shoestring and run mainly by flying buffs as it was when we first visited in the mid 70's. We witnessed the huge Scale Model flying events of the 1980's - I still have video and photos and the place was packed with cars parked from the flightline to almost back to the hangars and a sea of caravans and campers nearby. A continuous display of model flying throughout the day......and all to the dulcet (!) tones of a certain Mr Dave Bishop who ran his own large and popular 'Family Airshow' for several years. It's all gone much more corporate and professional now, even perhaps being accused of emulating a mini Duxford which for many, perhaps doesn't sit well with Richard Shuttleworth's mother's idea of a memorial to his loss during the war. Probably a middle ground will be best. We are where we are though.