Anthony Pattison 1

Many thanks for the scans John. I started in RC around 1970 at school and got into electronics to make the radios. Looking to retire from designing electronics for satellites early next year.... Still riding bikes too (1974 and 1985 Moto Guzzi 950s)...

Thanks for your efforts chaps. The pictures John sent are the thing! Would love to get some scans of the article/plan. Glad to see the modelling bug persists in us oldies and we can still remember some of this old stuff. A great result! Cheers Tony.

Back in the 1960s RCM&E covered other models apart from aircraft and quite a bit of electronics. I once built an electric model car from a free plan from one issue ( single channel Macgregor). I can't find anything about it on the Web. Anyone know of any archives for this really old stuff? Cheers Tony.

Well I bought a 40MHz Rx crystal and fired up a 40yr old RCM&E Rx with it and it worked fine with the old Graupner Tx. With the old Multiplex Tx it worked but servos very jittery - looking on scope the RF side was all good but the Tx sends 9 channels whilst the Rx decoder counter is only 8 stages so framing gets screwed. Just need to tweak the caps on the front end coils to retune and Robert's your mother's brother...

Full RCM&E articles attached. RCM&E radio system(1).pdf

Glad to see there are other oldies still interested in these old designs. I now have all the original data plus the update article for 35MHz so I'm planning to convert a couple of old RCM&E receivers to 40MHz for some old boats for my grandson - already have a couple of old 40MHz Tx. Much more interesting than just sticking in modern 2.4GHz stuff and being a Yorkshireman I can save a bit o'brass too! 🙂 Many thanks John for the articles. Tony

I had a few of these sets back in the day and they were very good. John has sent me the pdfs of the articles so I can look at tweaking a couple of old receivers to 40MHz for use on an old aerokits crash tender for my grandson...

I'm looking for a copy of the articles on the RC system which appeared in RCM&E from May79 onwards. I particularly want the circuit diagrams if anyone has copies? Cheers

I haven't done much building over the last few years and see that Solarfilm is now no longer made. Can anyone advise if there are any materials like airspan and litespan still made for covering small models to look like tissue but with some strength? Cheers Tony

Thanks for responses guys I'll follow things up to sort out building something over the winter I hope. I think Shaun's model on an old model mag cover was the one that inspired me to look into the Coquette and I did make an OS26 powered one some years ago - flew well at 46" span but I overdid the beefing up and that covered with GlossTex did make it something of a brick! Shaun - are you the guy from Pandas who does the single channel/old radio/2.4GHz blog? I'm from Normanton originally and started flying model planes back in 1970 from Heath Common and I have also done a couple of old transmitters based on Spektrum RF modules and home brewed Arduino code - perhaps it's something in the water there? Cheers Tony

Hi, I want to build an enlarged version of the Vic Smeed Coquette which was originally a 30 inch free flight model. There are semi-kits available for this but I have seen on t'internet larger versions mentioned - 46" version from Derek Foxwell and a 72" version from Paul Howkins. Does anyone know if there are any plans available for an enlarged Coquette? Regards Tony

Finally tested the plane with reduced throws and corrected thrustline and it flies as expected. Really this model to my mind has ailerons that are too large - with the current reduced throws any slop in linkages has too much effect and a smaller area with sensible deflections and throw geometries would make more sense to me. Exponential would help but would really be technology correcting poor design - it's not a 3D model and to use big ailerons and big throws it needs more power..... Model now flies well although it really isn't a slow floater and does benefit by flying at a reasonable speed and doing a bit of aerobatics (just like a Wot 4 really). If you want a slow and easy small model then this isn't it... Next job is to replace the rubbish undercarriage with a piano wire jobbie and perhaps increase the power to see what it can do (will need 15 or 20A ESC).... All-in-all not a bad little plane but not that great for Ripmax and, if my example is representative, there could be a lot of them bite-the-dust on early sorties..... Tony

Whilst awaiting decent weather, when I'm free to fly, I thought I would check motor thrustline as I didn't like the look of it. Right thrust of 'a couple of degrees' looked pretty good to my eyeball but it really seemed that the motor had 'up' thrust... To check, I took some mobile phone pics carefully aligned to see wingtip and fus. When printed at A3 I drew lines on print representing wing chord and motor axis and sure enough I had 2 degrees upthrust which is NOT what I want on a high wing model. Packing motor mount with suitable washers gives me about 2 degrees of downthrust which is more 'standard' so it will be interesting to see how it fares on next test flight - it now looks far more sensible so expect it to be vastly improved.... On the other hand, as SWMBO says - What do I know?

I have now reduced throws on elevator and ailerons to what I consider to be 'sensible' levels. As I am using a simple DX4 Tx with very basic functions I drilled new holes in horns and servo arms to get reduced throws. I don't have any Tx with expo and have never felt the need to be honest. I will do next tests without u/c and rebalance as needed. Clearly there is no reason why this model will not fly well as it's a very simple plane but to my mind 'out of the box' it's pretty poor and not really what I expected from Ripmax and certainly doesn't do Chris Foss' design justice...

Well after flying all sorts and sizes of WOT 4 since my first one around 1983 I imagined the Mini Wot4 would be more of the same - generally stable and well mannered but capable of some aerobatics with enough power.... How wrong I was. Two test flights last night were as bad as i can ever remember in 45 years of flying. The model survived but was a nightmare to handle - yes the u/c is utterly useless and a nylon one would be infinitely better! CofG seems pretty good but I will add some nose weight for now, massively reduce throws in order to gain some control and it seems to need lots of downthrust - reaches for the stars with power on and dives with power off. Also suspect I too may have dodgey linkages with false neutrals. All in all very disappointed but hope I can sort the problems before it gets the better of me. If my experience is anything to go by, this model needs a lot of care on test flights and it really isn't one for the inexperienced..... Anyone else tried one yet? Any suggested checks/mods? Tony