Cuban8

Those SLEC tanks without any form of positive location for the fuel lines can be improved by using a heated bent modelling pin to carefully melt a small 'furrow' in the tank's otherwise smooth fuel line connections - just a slight indentation in the plastic and the 'flash' that get thrown up is enough for the fuel pipe to grip on and remain secure. Always used this 'fix' when I used to use those tanks in all my models. Good tanks other than this design oversight IMHO.

Very well done indeed. Hopefully, they'll remain fully engaged with the hobby for many years to come - not saying it'll be the case with these two obviously talented lads, but the tendency I've noticed over the years is that most good young teenage pilots like them drift away, never to return within a few years. Seen it in both of my clubs despite attemps to make the hobby as attractive as possible. Lots of reasons for this and many people do start the hobby and pack it in after a brief period no matter what their age. I'm not unusual in flying models for over fifty five years without a break for any extended time. I wonder why some of us 'soldier on' and others drift away?

That's a shame Brian, like you I've spent and saved loads with HK and excluding one or two duds over the years, their products have been fine and delivered with no probs. As with all these sources of our equipment from off shore firms, I think one has to take the view that what you spend must be an amount that you are prepared to lose. As soon as you hit 'purchase' accept that the money has gone for good and you might not get your goods. In reality, the chances of a total loss are small and quite acceptable, but nevertheless be prepared for disappointment and hassle. If the saving on the UK price isn't worth it (surprising what you can find if you shop around) then give it a miss. Paypal's protection is very good as you and others have found. Mrs C8 recently had a rare bad experience with a UK Ebay business seller who sent a clearly mis-described new item and refused to deal with the issue. Ebay stepped in and she received a quick full refund (forty quid) after the low-life of a bloke finally took the item back - although it was actually Ebay that gave her the refund rather than the seller. I suppose they chase him later for payment. I'm very impressed so far with Aliexpress - have ordered quite a number of items including a Futura EDF, gyros and servos from them with no problems at all. Their communications and tracking are very good and gear I've had from the so far (not just modelling stuff) has arrived on time and in one piece. The Futura survived its journey totally unscathed from China, only for me to have it slip out of my hands when checking the CG in my workshop and denting a wing tip ..........grrrrr! The servos that I ordered as digitals were in actual fact analogue when received, but they are nicely made and run perfectly well for the use I intend for them. Not worth making a fuss about tbh. I only ordered them from Aliexpress because they were the only place I could find with the exact size of servo that I needed - I'm sure Servo Shop would have had something in their huge range, but seeing as they've packed it in they're no longer an option.

Yeah, don't think a tranny jabbering away at the pilot for ten minutes with all sorts of info and data or whatever would go down at all well at my club - imagine having two or three at it at the same time!! Down to the individual whether they want this sort of thing, I'm sure it does it have its place and I wouldn't label it nonsense myself, but please consider other flyers on the flightline and use an earpiece.

Hopefully, you'll get a definitive explanation and a certain fix, will be interested to know what they find. A precautionary change of RF board used to be the usual response some years ago, often FOC on their older kit like the DX8 G1 and DX7 when there were some issues with RF boards - a friend had his DX8 G1 with no RF output fixed FOC when quite a way out of warranty. AFAIA those RF board issues were sorted years ago, but customers have long memories with just a seed of doubt creeping in still. Having been a bench repair technician on industrial type instrumentation for a few years back in the 1990's, normally you'd be pretty confident of spotting a fault when the returned item had a note saying...."we did XY and Z to the instrument and blew it up" as opposed to one fault report that I recall said something like "every so often we get a spurious read out from the unit, but then we might go for a month during testing when it works fine"............great.

You've been unlucky with your TV but at least you have it back up and running now. 👍 Looks like they outsource their repairs to these people https://www.tvrs-uk.co.uk/ Obviously well set up to deal with all sorts of repairs, clearly uneconomical for the individual manufacturers themselves to provide that sort of service. Must still be bordering on the uneconomic to make the repair even with the more expensive OLED sets - I can't imagine them bothering with one of the cheaper TVs costing only two or three hundred quid.

And the FF7 which had four memories - expandable with a DIY dongle that you could build IIRC.

Yep, agree......back in the day when our radios operated pretty much on the same principle as any domestic radio or wireless set, then things did drift within them and could lead to problems if not regularly checked and re-aligned. Remember the faff of adjacent channel checks and only flying on odd or even numbers in your group to hopefully mitigate the effect of badly aligned sets? I remember going to Model Avionics, the Futaba Service Agents in the 80's, near Woolwich IIRC, to get some replacement stick potentiometers and talking to the proprietor about servicing and how they'd vibration test the receivers after repair (when at the time it was economic to repair them) on their vibration table! How times change. Digital and computerised techniques have revolutionised consumer electronics - your TV for instance, once a troublesome item in the past, even in the post valve days and then with highly complex, and mainly discrete transistorised circuitry that was prone to all manner of problems. Early ICs improved things but not that much. Knowing a good TV engineer was a boon. I did the C&G radio and TV servicing course (and passed!) in my own time at evening classes back in the 80's - but never pursued it as a career......I wasn't working in the TV trade so getting practical experience would be limited - probably a good move seeing at how reliable modern TVs are are and have been since the demise of the old CRT big box TVs.

Not a tremendous turn out for our informal VE warbirds flying day - quality rather than quantity, I guess. We all got a flight in before mid morning when the initial early moderate easterly really started to get up to a gusty 20+mph. Not a lot of fun when getting blown about and coping with the ground turbulence at our field from nearby high ground from an easterly breeze. Oh well......

Exactly what I do to push the system and give me confidence - 50 paces rather than 30 also, as I believe is the recommended distance for Spektrum. If you buy used radio gear you are taking a big chance and TBH if you run into trouble, don't be surprised. Unless you absolutely know the radio has come from a completely trusted source - maybe a good friend in your club who you know is careful with his gear and is simply upgrading, then I would say NEVER buy used gear. There are unscrupulous people out there who will unload dodgy gear, well knowing that it's bad, as well as others who will off load kit because they simply suspect it - what a dirty thing to do.

What are the other hinges like? a failed elevator hinge would really spoil your day😢

I doubt if 'lone flyers' will appreciate being forced to join a club to remain legal - I don't know about every 'lone flyer' but they've all made a choice to enjoy the hobby in that way, which possibly says something about their character and temperament, lots of possible reasons I guess. Personally, I find there's nothing more boring and disappointing than finding no other flyers on the field, some others see the hobby quite differently, which of course is fine. Maybe just being a member of one of the official modelling organisations will be enough for the CAA? What exactly will constitute an official flying location? If it's legal to fly in a certain place away from a club now, then as long as the CAA have a record of it, what's the problem? In that case that'll be good for FPVUK with their far cheaper membership option compared with BMFA.

A totally absurd situation at the start of all this regarding deciding what is and what isn't a model aircraft - they just couldn't be bothered to do the job properly and simply lumped us in with all the rest. At least it looks as though they've realised that model flying clubs represent very little risk - which we were saying all along at the start of this.

I do understand you questioning the price of a commodity that has increased in price recently. Yesterday, Mrs C8 and I had a light lunch in a museum cafe. Nothing special.....two coffees, a sausage sandwich and a bacon sandwich - just one small piece of cake as well...........the charge?........ £23 A lot more that we might have expected to pay a few years back. I didn't mind, it was a pleasant location and not being a franchised eatery, all the profits after running costs go to the Museum (The Museum of Power near Maldon). It was a very nice lunch but was it worth £23? In terms of the cost of the materials alone, no of course not, but as part of a pleasant day out then yes most certainly. To put that lunch together at home would have cost about five quid or less, but of course we aren't running a business or trying to raise funds. I think you've got to look at the wider picture..........£36 for a glass of tap water would be absurd but whatever one is being charged for a manufactured product that is fundamental to being able to enjoy one's hobby as glowfuel is, needs to be looked at carefully. I doubt that the producers of the fuel or the retailer are making much out of the sale TBH. I paid £12 for an OS F plug recently (called in to Inwoods) - easily twice the cost for the same item only a few years back, and I reckon I got a good deal as they are as much as £15 from other suppliers. Is it worth £12?.....yes to me it is, because without it the model that it's intended for remains grounded. Is it worth £12 in terms of raw materials? I suspect not. Money simply doesn't buy as much as it used to these days.

I think it might just have been a recommendation..... now dropped, but I believe I'm right in saying that when 2.4 Ghz sets started to become available, a black flag was supposed to be flown from them. Maybe to indicate to others that they were not flying with a 35 set on a unknown and unflagged 35 channel, probably a good idea right at the start before the new tech really took over. Only ever saw one flyer in my club who bothered with this even way past the time when hardly anyone was still on 35.....a nice enough chap and an excellent builder and flyer, but one of those very pedantic types who would go into the minutest detail of things, really just for the sake of it.

Ditto with my clubs' pegboards.......I'm pretty sure that none of the members in either of my clubs are using 35 Mhz any more - certainly not as their main radio - possibly one or two old models flown now and again using their original pre 24Ghz equipment just for old times sake. Never seen one though.

I used to set other channels to give what I thought would be a slight left decending turn, but to be honest, the chances of that working out is very slim, given the multitude of orientations the model could find itself in when failsafe operates. Throttle closed/cut and hold last postition which is the default on my gear is how I set my gear now. If I started thermal soaring again I'd go for airbrakes out and other surfaces to give a reasonably tight circle. Some will advocate a spin - several schools of thought though. One worry with IC models is the issue of a power failure causing the RX to shut down and hence no failsafe to close the throttle - dodgy switches, duff batteries and bad connections etc. Could be addressed by a back up system and I'm sure operators of large and sophisticated models of various types (big petrols and turbines etc) have this well covered already - whether it's practical in your average small or mid size sport model is another issue. Really worth doing a thorough orientation check on a new model as well as the usual range check before flight - modern gear seems very tolerant of how it's arranged but best practise is the way to go, and trying to find a 'dead spot' causing a hold on the ground is better than discovering it in the air.

All I was appealing for was to keep overtly political comments, prejudices and rants off of our forum. It's in the Ts and Cs after all, and we hear enough of it elsewhere. Could very easily put some pretty scathing stuff regarding the worldwide political landscape as we find it at the moment - my views alone that when talking about model flying I'll keep to myself. I hope others will follow.

Flew directly over our flying field adjacent to the A12 - didn't see it directly myself but obviously nothing like the scale of what was put together in the past from a few stills taken from our field that I have seen. News video on Youtube shows how diluted such occasions are today. Hope to be at Duxford on this coming Saturday for their flying day take on the VE commemoration if the weather holds. More my cup of tea.

This is getting very close to a political argument (Orange Lunatic) so lets be careful please.........what I will say is that the (long) march of Chinese industry and its effect on the 'old order' has been significant and has been ignored by us and almost everyone else for decades - we've been happy to de-industrialise and enjoy the cheap goods from Eastern countries since the 1960s - Hong Kong and Japan for starters so nothing new......what did anybody expect? We are where we are.

I imagine that the designers and engineers at APC have looked into this subject pretty closely and determined that their electric flight props offer significant advantages over their excellent props designed at the outset for IC. This must have been very costly in terms of R&D, tooling etc for them, so putting my trust in their expertise, I always use leccy props on leccies and IC on IC. Chances are if there wasn't a worthwhile advantage, APC wouldn't have bothered at all, or merely just tinkered minimally with the IC prop design as a marketing excercise. I doubt if they are that sort of company TBH. Not exactly difficult to perform comparative tests between the types, although to be honest and apart from idle curiosity, why would you bother? Looking at a couple of online suppliers, IC APC's seem very slightly cheaper than their E equivallent - surely a quid or so difference isn't influencing people? Apart from a little bendy IC prop on a 'belly flopper' leccy, I see no reason to not use a prop specifically designed for an electric setup.

No damp or wet rot then? 🐟

My MO for range checking models in my garden is as follows.......although Spektrum quote thirty paces I take my tranny to at least 50 paces to the back of my garden and put it into reduced power mode. Always solid control although the frame losses go nuts until full power is restored. Never a hold. Sometimes control is lost in low power mode when I put the tranny behind my back - sometimes not. Perhaps my bladder is fuller at other times than others!! 😉 It always loses contact in low power mode when I put the tranny behind the trunk of a substantial tree we have in the garden. Probably all connected with the water content of what the signal is travelling through and hence the level of attenuation. Not sure about FP's brick wall, maybe it was damp? Wouldn't have thought that dry masonry would be an issue - WiFi routers seem to (usually) manage OK. Never a problem when on normal full power either behind the tree or shielded by my body, so I don't worry about my tranny being blanked by other flyers on a busy flight line. If all of Rockers checks and setting were OK, then I'd have looked at the trannies RF output level - maybe not totally up to standard but enough to pass a basic range check perhaps. A flying buddy lost two expensive models to a similar fault until it was traced to a bad RF board.....a Futaba tranny eventually diagnosed and fixed by their repair centre. Nothing is infallible. Edit. Mind you... on two trannies? Nah.

Seen plenty of Rudder/Elevator low wing models over the field in years past - mainly vintage types, both models and pilots! - not my cup of tea but perfectly flyable with the right setup.

Friend of mine lost a nice model to an unexplained radio issue at the weekend - Futaba gear used........... You've made a guess at a faulty tranny and dumped it without really investigating closely what happened or trying to recreate the fault and pinning it down. I don't blame you for losing confidence in your gear but it's going to be much harder to figure out exactly what happened now and might well have just been something very simple. Hope you get it sorted.