Cuban8

If you do have a charger that can be adjusted to account for a small deviation from the ideal final figure, it's still only going to be an indication unless a known calibrated meter (which very few will have access to) is used as the guide. By all means set with a standard hobby DVM to get the 'correct' figure to display, but what you see will almost certainly not be what you're actually getting.

Precisely the same problem we would have.

Seems to me that whether club gear is stolen or not is really a matter or chance as much as anything. Bad luck to be targetted in the first place, whether thieves are disturbed during the theft, problems with removing the gear and removing it from the site - a number of issues really. Security cameras are fine and by all means fit them if you can, but they don't seem to be very effective as a deterrent. What happens if a security system warns of a break in? The chances of the police getting to a flying site and catching the thieves in the act is unlikely, and dealing with the situation independently runs all sorts of risks. I don't see any effective solution other than keeping nothing of value at your field, which would be very inconvenient and not practical for most clubs trying to maintain a high quality and regularly maintained patch.

Almost a classic now .......had one back when they first came out in the 80s/early 90s IIRC. Always came with a simple airbleed slow running adjustment that worked very well. I think the snag with a lot of the Chinese clones is that they did sometimes let themselves down on the carbs. Maybe the manufacturing accuracy just wasn't there or varied from OK to a bit rough depending if you were lucky or not. I've had a lot of ASP and SC motors, both 2S and 4S and some could be ultra sensitive on the carb setting, in particular the idle needle. You generally could get them right but it would only be after the motor was very well run in and then a very light hand was needed to get the tick over correct. Even less than 1/16 of a turn on the slow running jet would make a big difference so half of that movement again i.e next to nothing would be needed to get things right or as close as possible. A lot of patience would be needed - something that many flyers aren't blessed with.

My own club suffered a loss of some equipment a few years back worth around a couple of grand or so. Kept in as secure a place as possible but nothing able to resist battery powered angle grinders and a bit of determination. The loss was covered by the BMFA affiliated club insurance so we were not out of pocket but obviously seriously inconvenienced. We had another attempt to steal equipment some while later but the thieves must have been disturbed or thought better of it for whatever reason and our kit wasn't taken. We've increased our security again by investing in a number of measures and with help from a local farmer a few weak spots in the field perimeter have been tightened up to make vehicular access more difficult. If the bad guys want your stuff they'll have it, but just make it as difficult as possible and keep a watchful eye out for people casing your field or flying site.

Agree. 20mV is a very tiny discrepency in the expected reading and I really wouldn't worry about it. You'd need a proper calibrated meter to check it anyway - volt meters (DVMs) that you can buy for not a lot of money will have this order of reading discrepency, or worse when new and out of the box. The expensive Fluke meter that I used for work had to be calibrated annually by a test house and would usually need adjustment albeit by only a very small amount. Still have it as it was gifted to me when I packed up work.

Remember my warning of beginners' burnout way back when you started on this rocky road? You've dodged that, so well done. I think you've done marvellously well to stay the course, because many chaps who have had similar experiences to yourself would have become overwhelmed and chucked the towel in long ago. I've seen it several times hence my earlier comments. Setting a track towards your A is great but don't expect to stick to it like glue. Stuff happens to knock us all off course so keep things and expectations flexible. It's frustrating when you read about people (often kids without the usual distractions) doing their A within a few months of their first flight, but it's unrealistic to expect everyone to be the same with us all having different capabilities and resources, e.g. having easy access to regular training, decent weather and work and family matters not 'getting in the way' too much. If it means waiting until next year until you can get 'all your ducks in a row' so to speak, then carry on enjoying the journey, you'll get there in the end. Good luck.

Perhaps it's simply a discussion point, after all, we are contributing to a forum. Ideas and views are exchanged and not unnaturally, opinions and preferences will differ. Providing things are kept polite and respectful of others' ways of going about things then I don't see any problem. On the specific case of diy fuel, it's something that only a tiny minority of flyers do these days so it's unusual and worthy of comment just from that standpoint alone. The trouble with on-line discussions is that they lack the normal face-to-face conversational interaction between contributors just chewing the fat over the field or down the pub. Not saying that those chats don't always follow an ideal course. However, a wry friendly smile or raised eyebrow adds so much to nuance a 'real' conversation and that effect is missing from a line of quickly typed words which can be all too easily misinterpreted - even with 😀 etc. I guess we don't always get it spot on.

Thanks for the replies, a few reviews on YouTube that also seem positive so I think I'll give one a try. I do tend to feel the cold much more since taking beta blockers for the old ticker, so a heated under jacket will come in handy not just for the flying field but also just outside generally and spending time in my unheated garage. We have quite good shelters on our field and the cars are close by so plenty of opportunity to stop getting too cold. I'm not keen on wearing lots of layers so seems a good idea.

I've been hunting for some servoless retracts recently and Aliexpress does have quite selection - these are small and might fit your needs https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006405860659.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.19.bf520KfN0KfNAU&algo_pvid=883fee18-5b17-41ec-917c-0e526b56b2a0&algo_exp_id=883fee18-5b17-41ec-917c-0e526b56b2a0-9&pdp_npi=4%40dis!GBP!22.20!19.05!!!28.17!24.17!%40211b8f9b17259689560557514e1cf7!12000037050409548!sea!UK!4678888188!ABX&curPageLogUid=dyHSxFMjQC2Z&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch|query_from%3A Plenty of others to choose from .

Why on earth would you bother mixing your own and particularly for sport flying?

Has anyone had experience of the battery powered heated underjackets that can be bought for not very much on Amazon and Ebay etc. Any good?

My flying buddy runs large petrol engines and has invested in decent, although quite expensive, silencers from MTW - https://aerobatx.co.uk/shop/ I can vouch that the silencers are very effective indeed and alter the tone of sound emitted to something much more acceptable and easier on the ears as well as reducing volume. Worth considering before laying out a lot of money on an large and almost certainly more expensive electric conversion.

The fact is that there are many small businesses, and not just in the modelling sphere, that are woefully inadequate when it comes to customer service. I can think of a now defunct manufacturer of custom retracts who drove many of my clubmates nuts with never replying promptly (if at all) to enquiries and taking ages to fulfil orders. Might sound unkind but I think some people just play at it and don't take things seriously - not just very small outfits of course. Luckily, the vast majority of sellers I find are very good indeed. Not interested in who the poster's supplier was, but a worthwhile warning to find out who one is dealing with beforehand if that person or business is unknown to you. Caveat emptor and all that. Enough said.

Just normal white heatshrink film from my odds and ends box and applied with a modelling iron works well for me.

I don't understand why the motor didn't shut down given that the rest of the controls were unresponsive. It's not an old brushed motor setup by any chance?

You say that the model continued under power but with no response to the controls. A far as I'm aware even without the tranny failsafe activating, all brushless ESCs will cut off when they lose the throttle signal from the RX. If the ESC to RX plug had disconnected the servos would have frozen in postion (no BEC supply now) but the motor would have stopped so I doubt if it was that. Very odd. BTW, I flew a large thermal soarer between my feet on a fast and misjudged landing approach towards myself (intended to land off to one side) and bashed my shins very badly years ago.

IC or electric? You mention the motor, so does that suggest electric?

Are they actually a Japanese based company? Why would they give language options as English and Traditional/Simplified Chinese?

I use the methods shown in Gordon Whitehead's scale bible and have found them to be pretty much bang on. This site gives the methods used in the book https://www.rc-airplanes-simplified.com/scale-model-rc-airplane.html#google_vignette I have a couple of Yaks and there are quite a few in my clubs - they are tollerant of a fairly variable CG to suite pilot taste (up to a point of course) but my feeling is that your model will be fine for its first flights if it balances at about 30% of its root chord measured from the LE. Don't have too much elevator movement (set rates ) and I wouldn't dial in any expo at this point. Too far forward a CG will give you a machine that will fly safely but will be very unresponsive in pitch so you could go to a 25% point or somewhere in between if you prefer. Hope this is of some use.

Some excellent (and essential) bedtime reading for model flying insomniacs can be found in Martin Simmons's book 'Model Aircraft Aerodynamics' - a few around on the book seller websites for only a few quid. I have it in my library and it's worth getting a copy not just for sleepness nights 😀 but for other more digestable info for those of us who are not particularly enthused by flight theory beyond the basics. All joking aside, it's a very complex subject that's difficult to grasp, I find. Pete's concise contributions here are very good. I think it might have been in one of the model mags years ago that had an aerodynamics article by a leading light of the time who was discussing wing sections, and how changes in their profile etc affected their performance in all sorts of ways when designing one's next model. I recall his closing remarks something along the lines of "you can take all the figures and L/D graphs on board - but in all likelihood, drawing around a favourite Wellington Boot sole will be easier and not that far off the mark"..............

My Futaba standard sport servos i.e. 3001s do not work correctly on anything over 6.5V as I found out when I was dabbling with changing over from nimhs a while ago. They are rated at a max of 6V so not surprising really. I believe Futaba's inexpensive new standard servos are still only rated for 6V max, but their standard digital servo (at twice the price) is rated to 8V. Servo Shop's website is very good for servo data.

Although a retired electronics techie, I'm not an RF expert but I do wonder just how much real useful information and indeed valid info in terms of RSSI and signal quality is given by our telemetry sets. My DX8 G2 came with a fancy telemetry RX that gave me warnings about signal quality and frame losses etc. First model I used it on passed a good solid range check - I always like to see at least 50M in open ground rather than the 30M quoted in the book but then it went mental squawking over low RSSI, even when taxiing over to the take off point. A level of 10% shut it up and I never got any problems with excessive frame losses and definitely no holds. Had the set now for over 10 years. I'd be interested in others opinions/expertise.

With the crazy cost of OS F plugs these days, having an engine that regularly blows them will have you in the poor house before you know it. They are extremely robust plugs and I've never had one blow except for when I've put 12V across one years ago when I got my power panel leads mixed up. As has been mentioned there are fakes for sale so avoid unknown Ebay sellers etc unless they are the Ebay outlets of recognised model shops. My venerable old Goldberg Chippy suffered a dead stick completely out of the blue a few weeks ago and given that model's complete reliability for very many years I thought that the ancient F plug in it must surely have finally given in - it hadn't when I checked things over. Tank and plumbing all removed and checked - tubing all changed as a matter of course - carb cleaned through - fuel checked for contamination - engine mechanicals checked and brand new F plug.....£12.99!! fitted. No obvious cause of the engine stoppage so I'll have to keep an eye on it.

Good idea to go electric with a club trainer. IC is otherwise fine of course, and obviously was the only practical choice for many of us who've been at this hobby for many years. However, the advantages of a modern electric set up are are just too good to ignore these days, both for the pupil and instructor. No reason why the IC route can't be explored by new flyers as they progress further and if they wish to do so.