Dale Bradly

VAuto dipping headlights. Second best thing ever. Why? 1. I'm human. I forget. I miss switching correctly from time to time. I'm also lazy. So its one less thing i have to do in life. 2. Because I'm human, and not 100.00% reliable at all hours of every day, as opposed to the camera smarts (or whatever it is that my vehicle is using) that doesnt get tired, doesnt have off days, doesnt "just forget", other drivers are not blinded by my faults. Therefore this has to be a win for the tech, because the other road users are the principal benefactors, not me.

FMS SuperEZ has my vote. Stupid easy to fly with stablisation turned on. Can be purchased with transmitter & batt, i.e. ready to fly. No idea how its priced in your currency though.

I love this feature. Why? Because I'm lazy. (And honest). I don't have to touch the thing: I stop, the car puts it on automatically. I drive off, the car takes it off automatically. What's not to like?

you're limited by the discharge capacity of your charger. With many chargers, this is often in the range of 5-10W. i.e. approximately "forever". you'll be better to run in a plane on the ground until you hit LVC. At least then you're well on the way and your (dis)charger can take over from there. Another option, since you're destroying the lipo, just find resistive load and connect it direct to the battery. A 12v car lamp is an common solution: When the light goes out, it's discharged and can be disposed of. Needs no external power supply etc, can be left out somewhere safe overnight and tomorrow it's good to go in the bin.

I call BS on the vendors response. (Not on you Tim). Based on the assumption your vendor is a UK based retailer: to be selling "several hundred" of these per year? That sounds like approximately one per day. I struggle to think a single store sells one per day. Having 2-3 admitted returned per year? Having been responsible for telling the same stories myself, you could easily double or even triple that number to be truthful. And how many dont get returned, or failed just outside of warranty and the owner doesnt follow up/care? It sounds to me like a 10% failure rate wouldnt be unexpected. (In retrospect, maybe the high failure rate explains the high sales volume!)

Nice model! Having now seen your photos, and the construction method to this point, it's too far in to go backwards. I would cover them with a proper waterproof covering, i.e. fibreglass cloth and wbp or epoxy resin as you prefer working with, and doing a through job of. I would think the difference in weight that this method might offer is of less importance at this size. If i bought this plane today in this condition i would: (i.e. using materials/methods i am familiar with) not bother skinning with balsa, i would spackle the foam to get the surface smooth enough I would then cover with glass cloth and epoxy, and then i would paint.

Interested in this too. Please post build!

Antenna complete and installed. Looking like it should be. And the factory stick ends were not up to the task, so a new set were duly purchased and fitted. That actually completes the "modifications", the last real task i want to carry out is give the front site a decent clean, removing the remains of labels and grime that appear over the years. I can see me pulling the whole thing apart again to remove the everything from the anodized metal front cover to give it a good going over. Job for this weekend perhaps.

So the antenna is the next step. Wanting to keep it somewhat factory looking from the outside, i wanted to use the original antenna mount. However, when putting the 2.4 antenna inside the Futaba mount meant that the antenna would not be able to hinge, as the hinge point would be inside the mount. So i needed to "lengthen" the 2.4 mounting arrangement, so the antenna protruded a little further. Hence the small sma extention at bottom of pic. I considered screwing the 2.4 antenna base to the bottom of this mount as the original longwire antenna did, but this meant trying to do up all the securing fastenings from inside the mount, so this idea was quickly dumped. I then cut a piece of scrap aluminium to fasten down with the mounting fasteners, that would then take the antenna mount, the extension, and the antenna itself easily. with the bottom of the mount (where it protrudes inside the Tx out of sight) cut off, this then slips right over the whole new antenna and with 4 machine screws, the whole lot looks like it's meant to be.

Thanks for that. Understood, not something I need, but appreciate that others would find the appeal.

From the page Alan linked: (About Diacov) and reiterating what Alan has said; They say iron from 100 degrees, but 120 seems better to us.

So i had a proper play with the Corona module in my temp location. All 7 channels respond in full, and all the "options" this radio has (D/R, Expo (called VTR on here), the built in mixes etc) all work when asked to. Happily drove 6 assorted servos and an retract unit on Ch 5, so there is really no need to look elsewhere. And this was an easier place to connect wires to, so I've decided to use this location, despite what i posted earlier. So without further ado, i mounted the module and soldered in place. Note the white connector at the bottom right has disappeared from the previous photo, i removed it and soldered the power and ppm signal wires to the other side of the board here. Also took out the pins at the center of the board where the Futaba RD module connected, as these were now unneeded and would be in the way of the next part. I gutted the Futaba RF module enclosure, and cut away one side. This serves two purposes: I'm going to mount the daughterboard on the side of the RF enclosure. This has the bind button and indicator LED. Since these functions won't be needed often, i'm happy to hide them away, and only need to pop the RF enclosure out to get at anyway. The cutout provides clearance where the button & LED will protrude into the cavity. The other reason for the cutout is it gives me a convenient place to store the special balance charge lead so it doesn't get misplaced! The next step was to mount the aerial. I want to use the factory aerial mount, but there is a physical incompatibility here, so i have a small widget on order to resolve this. So until this arrives, there isn't a lot left i can do. So stand by for the next update in a few days.

Before playing with the 2.4g module, i did a couple of other small jobs. Firstly i verified that there is a direct link from the factory charging port to the battery, which there is. I had it in my head there was a diode in the circuit, which would interfere with charging via this port, but as there is not, then that's fine. So to can charge off two seperate input sockets on completion, being the original charge socket with it's center negative barrel connector, or the newly modified 6pin ex trainer plug. Second job was to get the original voltmeter on the front of the Tx working. Not complicated. The positive side of this is connected direct to battery +ve via the power switch through a potentiometer, presumably to allow for fine tuning of the voltmeter. The -ve side however returns via the RF module. I understand that when the RF module is in operation, a transistor within this allows the -ve circuit to complete. In other words: no RF output = no battery indication. Since i won't be using a Futaba rf module, i put a link in on the motherboard, joining the batt meter's -ve connection to batt -ve. The onboard potentiometer, even at full adjustment wasn't enough to bring the voltmeter needle down of the stop, so the link is actually a resistor. So now when the Tx is turned on, the meter comes up to about 99% of scale. I'm not looking at it as a accurate voltmeter, but rather just as an indicator that the thing is turned on. So success here. So the next step i thought i'd start playing with the RF side of things. I picked this up recently to be the heart of the operation: I thought i'd carry out a "test drive" before putting in a lot of effort to find there was a bigger issue at play here. The unit is a DIY "hack" module, similar to the FrSky one that was popular (and i fitted to my JR a decade ago). So as the trainer port is no longer in use, the connections for same gave me a convenient place to connect this up and "see if it worked". The white plug at the bottom right of the motherboard is this. The 4 wires on it used to go to the trainer socket. They are batt +ve & -ve, (red & black) ppm out (brown) and ppm in (yellow). So the red, black and brown give me all i need to connect the Corona 2.4 module. With that lashed up, a typical bind sequence carried out between Tx & Rx, success was had. I could operate the servo at the Rx. I don't intend on using this for the permanent connections though, as i have noted there is no direct link between the PPM output terminal here at the trainer port, and the one at the (Futaba) RF module terminal. Reasons for, or if i would miss out on anything by connecting here, i don't know. Coming off the Tx at the point where the PPM signal was turned into RF makes more sense to me, then i'm transmitting as much as possible, so making the most of the factory features of the radio. Next step I'll be doing a little more testing and then look to permanently mount and connect the Corona RF module.

Tell me, what's the advantage/reasoning for "Phil Greens encoder boards based on an arduino nano"?

Good work John, may it serve well! So the first step was battery. Not much point doing anything else if i don't have a power supply. These units originally had a built in NiCd, and about 8.4V if memory serves correctly, so had to find something that will fit in the space available. I found a 3s LiFe that would, so this was duly purchased. Located adjacent is the redundant trainer port, which will go on to find a new life as the battery balance connector. So made this up, and the matching charge adaptor. So with that done, i can now power it up. So the next step will be to temporarily connect the 2.4 module and see if that comes to life.