Adrian Smith 1

One of my favourite "builds", ie ARTF assemblies, was my Flair Giles 202. It had an OS 90FX upfront and was a an absolute beauty and great fun to fly. That is until after a low inverted pass I totalled it because in my younger day I was a bit too cocky. Bit of a shame as I can't seem to find any of my photos of it. Probably lost the negatives back in the day we all used Kodak film cassettes. 😒

Yup, I will be faced with this soon. I notice you can order all the setup on the BT website +DV and better handsets. However, I actually want to talk to a human being as I have couple of questions. How do you do that? Can't see a sales line to call. I am with Plusnet at the moment and I can't say they were very helpful.

Yup, I know only too well recently, Martin. I have had leading edges come unstuck on a couple of aircraft although there didn't seem much difference in control, just the noise. It was like the planes were falling apart.

Nice see a P51 Red Tail version modelled, Aidan. Those boys achieved a lot in their time in WW2.

What a setting, what a runway - shame about the plane. It looked quite promising 😒

At last the Capiche all set up I how wanted it to be 😀. Wrung her out this morning with 4 x 7 minute flights, mostly at full tilt and with no adverse reactions. Now I have the bottom vent in the cowl I can feel the temperature of the ESC by reaching in. On quite a warm morning (21c) today the ESC barely registered any warmth after each flight. I did give it a good 10 minutes between each flight though just in case! One thing I can't explain is she goes into an inverted flat spin very quickly which looks great, but going into an upright flat spin takes a lot longer and a couple of times I thought I was to going run out of sky. No harm done though. Great fun today with also curious buzzards keeping their distance.

Yeah GG, I know what you mean. Might be getting some decent weather coming up. Hopefully on Wednesday & Friday.😀

The main modifications done to see how we do on the next flights, hopefully Wednesday. I first cut a vent under the cowl roughly inline with ESC and finished it with a rubber trim and cyano. I now have two ventilation holes under the fuselage now which I need to tidy up. I also put a light ply support on the cross spar of the fuselage as I felt it needed some strength. I will see how that goes and if this is not enough more action will be taken. I will report back.

An interesting idea Philip. Indeed I think that to modify your idea and present a more secure way of mounting the ESC, I would built an angled platform using a piece of liteply and and add two struts of different heights to form the 45degree angle. There is plenty of room under the motor box to do this and it would also provide a secure platform for me to mount the ESC. I usually put thickish rubber grommets under the mounting screws to provide a slight cushion.

Philip, that's a novel suggestion with the heat sink. I haven't come across that before. You learn something every day! Peter, thanks for the suggestions and worth a try. The thing that puzzles me is I have exactly the same configuration in my GoldWing 91" Slick with a Dualsky GA 8000 up from and 200A ESC as shown below. This has never been a problem before although I will concede the cowl internal area on the Slick is somewhat larger than the Capiche which has quite a slimline design. The Slick :- The Capiche:- What I will add here is that I upgraded the Dualsky GA6000(50-60cc) on the Capiche to fit the GA8000 (80cc-120cc) upfront and she now gives the lively performance I like. Particularly as the long moment on the fuselage which imparts a fair bit of extra weight. It also helps me to position the power packs much further back. Both Have the Hobbywing Platinum 200A HV OPTO ESC too.

I think I have solved my motor cutout problem. Back to the work shop this morning to do a full check. First off I removed the prop and cowl. As a matter of trying to cut a corner I thought I would reinstall the power packs and try and run her again. Well low and behold all was well and performed as expected and ran the motor for some while at full chat. As a matter of course I did put a new throttle lead subsequent to the test. After a bit of thought I think it may be the ESC heat cut off was activated as I taxied after landing on the last flight and it reset overnight. Being a super-dooper HobbyWing 200A Platinum OPTO ESC it does state in the manual that there is a heat cut out to save you blowing the thing up and having to fork out £350+ for a new one. So why was this so? Firstly, I decided to cut a second large slot in the covering film on the underside where the pipe tunnel frame is. The second thing to do is make the air outflow area at the bottom of the cowl rear much bigger. Additionally, I reduced the motor timing down to 20 (from 22) and the start up force from 5 to 4 (max force is 7), all done from a programming box. I feel a contributory factor to Thursday's issue is because as the weather was threatening at the time I undertook all flights in quite quick succession and not allowing sufficient cooling time. The turn back to taxi down the strip to the pilot with a burst of full throttle before cut out was the "straw that broke to camel's back" as the warm air on the cowl hadn't fully dissipated. When I fly next week I will see if this is the case after the modifications.

You know when you wish hadn't bothered to go flying - well I had one of those days 😒 With all the weather apps. indicating no rain this morning guess what? Drizzle, drizzle ...... I waited in the car for 45 minutes waiting for clearance which it appeared to do. 1minute 30 secs into the first flight the drizzle started again. Hasty landing and under cover again sharpish Another 40 odd minutes passed and I could see signs of some sailors' trousers (blue sky) coming my way. So after another patient wait up I go. Towards the end of the first flight I noticed some clattering of sorts coming from the Capiche. Another hasty landing to discover the following .... After a quick repair with sellotape.... Off I go again with two fully completed flights. And here divine intervention occurred as a dark cloud cloud appeared before the end of the third flight so down I come again and as fate would have it on taxiing back to the pilot area the motor quit not to be restarted again that morning. Phew, that was lucky! 😮 Decided to pack up and head to the work shop to investigate. That will be for another day. Hopefully it's not the ESC as it's brand new with only 3 flights on the clock. Got to check all the wiring to the motor and power packs along with the throttle signal lead which will take some time along with some testing with spare ESC kit. I will probably make a start tomorrow. I live to fight another day.

Nice plane there, Nick. The full size aircraft that operates from my strip is an RV-8 which I have had a go in. Good stuff too. No flying for me today so I cut the grass due to windy conditions. Hope to fly tomorrow (Thursday) weather permitting.

The 4-max switch has 2 modes, one for 2S lipo and the other for nimh/nicad. Just incase the picture doesn't make it clear. As I say totally reliable and I have been using them for years. My switches are located inside the fuselage well away from the power pack cables, usually towards the rear of the cockpit area along with the RX battery. It doesn't need to be anymore complicated than that. Just keep it simple.

For what it's worth I use these from 4-Max on my 2S RX batteries that are used in my large scale electrics. In all cases they are OPTO set ups which keep the RX source well away from the power packs where are connected separately. https://www.4-max.co.uk/gt-electrical-switch-8a.htm I have found these switches to be very reliable and well up to the task.

Good spot Manish. I don't see a price on it or I may just had a Daddy look for it instead of a Mummy look. I think my plan is 2A0 size and there aren't many sources that produce that size copy.

The sheet is 5ft x 2ft 7inch and stuck in the sticks as I am I don't have means to copy it so I don't know what to suggest.

I have the plans for The Goldberg Extra 300, also the Ultimate Bipe. What did you want to know DG?

Thank for the info on the thread, John. I see what you mean by different opinions though such is life! Reading between the lines I should be OK to leave them in a charged state for 3-4 days, but beyond that I should really take them down to storage for safety. As I say earlier I rarely comeback from flying with cell voltages over 3.9v so it's never been an issue up until now. I have UltraPower UP100AC Quad charger and while it's easy to find the discharge setting I am not 100pc sure how to set the discharge rate as in the past I have always used the storage discharge setting and let the charger get on with it, albeit rarely.

Wish I was there! Looks idyllic.

I usually charge my lipos the evening before flight time. The actual business of flying usually takes each cell down to 3.7-3.8v (after about 7 minutes) which in my case is 6S lipo. I leave them until the next flying session charge. Now on very rare occasions I don't actually fly that day - in this case waiting for ceramic tiles to be delivered (not happened yet) - how long should I safely leave them fully charged without degrading the battery? I am hopeful of flying by the end of the week though. Obviously, I can discharge them to a balanced storage level on the charger setting, but this take so long with a 6000 mAh lipo. The lipo has a 40C spec on it. . I could just discharge them to an acceptable level, but I am not sure how to, or what discharge rate to set on my charger. Any advice gladly accepted 😀. Thanks.

She's a cracker, Leccyflyer

Interesting you have tried Roaring Top lipos, Peter. I am quite interested in some 6S and they seem competitively priced on Amazon. It seems you are pleased with them>

Happens to the best of us, Peter. For every bad day, many more good ones follow! 👍

Arrived at the field this morning to be confronted with a threatening sky. I thought I would chance it as the wind was straight down the strip blowing 8-9 mph. In the meantime I had increased the motor timing on my GoldWing Slick 91" from 15 degrees to 22 degrees as I thought the lower setting was a bit benign. All good to start so nothing else for it, but go for it. As it turned out the rain held off and I had some good flights. Particularly satisfying were the inverted flat spins which took a while to take hold (3-4 turns) before she flattened out. Strangely she resists doing flat spins upright and I didn't want to get too close to the ground before bottling out. I will try another day. Just to illustrate how much of a lucky morning it was, the rain started just as I was packing up! 😁