Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator

Great project Martin, I'm very fond of the Maggie, in my avatar is a Magister. A quick question, why the A123 battery? Surely a lipo would give you better endurance and overall performance? BEB

As I said above! BEB

Take a look at AccuRC, specialises in heli's, excellent physics and cheaper! BEB

I'll close this because we already have a thread running on this topic. BEB

That sounds great Chris, but I've been a bit stitched up by the family on this trip as I said earlier. It started as I get up really early and drive to Doncaster on Saturday morning. That night I would stay with my son in York and after perhaps following a half day session back at the fly in would drive home on Sunday - fully independent, no probs, Chinese take away here I come! Then Mrs BEB says "Oh I think I'll come too." Now that's OK of course, but she does not "do early morning"! So it turns into we go on Friday to York, and I have a bit - read quite a big "bit" - of extra luggage to accommodate. Ah well, never mind. Then my daughter says, "well if you're both going - I come to" - and her luggage makes Mrs BEB look like a wandering nomad! Add into that she is a teacher so, doesn't finish until 4:00pm - just nice time for me to hit all the rush hour traffic in the that huge car park outside Manchester otherwise known as the M62! I mention Sunday, I mention, well I might be fairly late back Saturday night and I get greeted with "well its up to you of course but I would have thought you'd have wanted to spend more time with Owen, after all, that's why we are going isn't it"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Gasp! Disbelief! The whole purpose of the trip has been hijacked by women! All that is why, even though the Chinese take-away sounds great, I shall probably obediently trip back to base before its too dark! BEB

Piers: I think you have highlighted the potential weakness of making too much of this data. When a pilot reports an airprox he obviously completes a form, the form has a list of options as to what the airprox was with, "drone" and "model aircraft" are two of those options. So its not a CAA, or even a very objective, classification, its what a pilot decides to classify the small object that flashed past him at 100mph plus. Assuming he saw it OK his classification is hardly an informed, or illegally enforceable, one. He most probably uses the definition we have had on here, which we know is flawed, if its a multi-rotor it's a drone; if it has wings it's a model aeroplane! So, what I'm saying I suppose is that this is "soft data". Yes by all means employ it as a part of our case "look how few incidents involve models", but be aware its very vulnerable to attack and being discredited - so in my view we shouldn't lean too heavily upon it, or it will crumble! BEB PS the "bad years" may well be a product of this arbitrary and subjective classification scheme - more drones with wings those years!

Thanks guys. Cheers for the heads up on the water - I drink a lot water so I'll bring a couple of big bottles for the day. And thanks for the advice to drive down to unload John, certainly makes life a lot easier than several trips from the car park! . BEB

Quick question,...are there any battery charging facilities on site? Is it worth me bringing a charger? BEB

Should be with you guys late morning Saturday John. Looking forward to it. BEB PS Because the whole family have invited themselves along for weekend to visit my son (who lives in York) I will only have room for one model! I was thinking of towing my daughter on a pair of roller skates but for some reason she doesn't like the idea

Eric, yes you can only insert one image at a time - if you think about it that makes sense realy, the photos are to illustrate a dialogue, a load together has no narrative? But you should not need to insert twice! I have not come across this before? Please take a look in this area here on the forum which contains advice on posting photos. BEB

David, where do you stand and where was this ploughed field? I ask because I can see no hint of a ploughed field in the photo which might suggest you were miles off? BEB

Today has been all about the catches on the hatch. A bit of a fiddly job of course, because you have to get everything aligned correcty so the hatch will sit flat and flush with its surroundings. I used two cocktail sticks - cut off to about 6mm length protruding - at the front and a single sprung catch at the rear. The balsa in this area is quite soft so I decided to line the locating holes with brass tube that was epoxied in: A rebated channel was cut in the rear to accept the sprung catch: Again the catch was epoxied in and then covered over with a bit of scrap balsa. I coated the moving parts of the catch with vaseline before hand to stop any glue that "strayed" from completely gumming up the mechanism! And again a brass tube was let into the balsa to receive the pin. So here's the final product with the hatch in place: I need to iron the black covering back into place! Its lifting at the edges due to some "rugged" handling! That exposes "woody bits" which makes the hatch look a poor fit - I can assure you its not, look at this close up: So why have I fixed a washer to the catch lever? Because the hatch is such a snug fit I can't get it off with just the smooth lever - my fingers slip off it! I need someting to get my fingernails under! Right, just the aileron servos to do. They were on soak test today - passed fine - so onward and upward! BEB

Welcome Torsten, good to have you with us! You'll just going into your summer flying season I suppose - lucky guys! BEB

I find the trick is to use a fine-toothed hole saw (if you can find one!) on a higher speed setting. Then, as my dad was fond of saying, "let the saw do the work"! BEB

I wonder if you have accidentally gone into programming mode on the ESC? If you change timing etc strange things can happen! It might be worth considering doing a reset to default. BEB

Posted by Geoff Sleath on 25/09/2018 18:06:27: I like the neat battery mounting. Velcro holds batteries very firmly ... but often so firmly they seem to make every effort to become a permanent feature Geoff Don't I know it! Especially if you can only get your fingers into the hatchway, not your whole hand so you can't really get a good grip on it! That is why, on the bottom I've used non-slip matting rather than Velcro, it stops the battery sliding very effectively while the Velcro strap holds it down against the mat basically. Its an arrangement I've used in a number of models - so far sucessfully! (Fingers crossed!) BEB

Yes I've put that on record too! I tell you chaps, soon we will be dead fashionable, beards, a shed, slghtly distracted air. We'll be "Babe Magnets", I don't think I'll be able to cope! But I'll do my best! BEB

Thanks Ron. OK, nothing done really over the weekend and Monday. Went flying in a "weather window" on Saturday and was busy else where the other two days. Anyway - back at it today! I intend installing an arming plug on this model, so we need to do a bit of soldering. I know most for you will be very familar with this, but just incase anyone finds it useful I'll cover how I did that. First we solder two connectors together like this: The broken red wire will go via the arming plug, which is just a shorted out XT60. I find it helps to do a circuit diagram here - not because the circuit is complicated - it isn't its simple - but you need to be very conficdent about the gender of each connector. It would be a pain to assemble all this only to find you can't connect it! Also double and triple check the polarity of each connection - its surprising easy to get this wrong - ask how I know! I was putting together an FPV UAV at work a few years ago, OK it was much more complex than this - but when I connected the battery, big bang, about £300 quids worth of posh flight contoller "went west" and it nearly set the whole model on fire! Opps! We install this inside the aircraft between the ESC and the battery, So, as space is very tight upfront, I connected it to my ESC: I then fed the wires in from the front, and connected the broken red lead to the back of the arming plug socket: We are really shoe horning stuff in here! You can also see I managed to touch the model with the iron! The front of the arming socket (the other side) looks like this: So now I just make up a XT60 to fit in there and bridge across the two terminals. Next up I installed the new ESC in the cowl space and reinstalled the motor wthout the upthrust it had before. I found all the screws on the motor and the standoffs were lose when I was striping things down, this time they are all tighten firmly up with blue lock-tite. Finally I put cowl back - yes I have installed the receiver and checked that the motor is spinning in the right direction - I've been caught out by that one too many times! Finally here is a side-on view of the spinner location: As you can see there is a gaping great gap at the top! This has happened of course because I have taken the motor up thrust out, so now the cowl is in slightly the wrong place. It just clears the spinner at the bottom, so I'll leave it like that for now and see how it flys without the upthrust. If (crazily!) I have to reinstate it I don't want to have changed the cowl screw locations only to have to change them back again! So what stands between us and flying this beast? Well, I still have to put the servos in the wing, and I need to fit catches to the hatch. I still haven't repaired the holes! But they can wait until after the "maiden" What's the balance situation looking like? A quick, very rough, look tells me that the fuselage, on its own, now balances fairly close to the right point. But of course we have to add the wing - and I suspect that will will push the CoG back a little, not much though. So, this going to be close. If I was a betting man I'd give 3 to 1 against it balances as it is, but evens that it is within less than 10mm! If the later then a little bit of lead may be needed - but nothing like the over 1.3lb I took out! BEB     Edited By Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator on 25/09/2018 16:24:54