stu knowles

Not many rivets on a Mosquito!

Better than cutting your own grass is to buy in a commercial grass cutting firm that cuts a local sports / recreation / school field. No more arguments in the club about grass cutting, Their machinery is usually far more suitable for the acrerage of grass to be cut. Our field costs £65 per cut and we budget for £20 cuts per year. Club fees more than doubled as a result but it has secured the future of the club as we are no longer dependant on one or two people using ill suited domestic mowers

As above, Covering the glass with masking tape works well. Iron on film stick to the tape well.

The people infesting this forum seem to prefer responding to wanted ads sending a 'If you still want one of these contact my mate +++++ he has one' It really give me the hump that they have been here for ages playing the same tricks and yet are seemingly untraceable and immune from any form of retaliatory action. Are e-mails completely immune from back tracking?? I hear that on line fraud is now the largest crime group. No wonder if they are immune from any form of follow up.

I have a small 'concertina' bottle with a thin metal tube inserted. I think that the bottle originally contained printer ink and the tube came from a bottle of airfix kit glue. Slightly thinned PVA Draw a few pencil lines onthe model and it becomes a riveting mass production machine. For flat rivets a brass tube in a soldering iron works well. I had the best results using it AFTER applying the final colour coats, which was a bit counter intuitive. It needs only the lightest touch to put a circle in the paint.

Well I managed a quick maiden flight on the Tempest on Thursday evening. In my defence, we were a bit pressed for time and in our haste we managed a flight with an on boad glow. That apart, it flew well. I need to arrange much less elevator. I made my own control horns and got them too small so no slight on Richards kit.

Here's another one ready to go. I have gone slightly off piste with this one. Ufortunately we are away for a few days so the first flights will have to wait

Join the wings and build a box. Stick box to wing. Don't overthink the build, its very simple. Post up specifically where you are having a problem

I arrived at a similar conclusion about foamies a long time ago. I cannot deny their flyability and ease of operation and I always have one available, often carried as a back up model to the main flyer of the day. I find that they are completely without 'soul' and find no pleasure in ownership or flying beyond just keeping the eye / thumb co-ordination sharp. Look along a flightline and they often dominate, all the same as each other. Yuk! When they were as cheap as chips, under £100, you'd be mad not to have one but paying ££££££'s ? Nope. Some of the WR models shown on this forum are amazing. Reasonably priced kit. Kept simple, BP/PVA covering. Household emulsion paint and weathered with a bit of chalk and ingenuity, they look fantastic and there isn't another one just like that anywhere. I normlly fly bigger stuff that takes ages to finish. I broke off the main project to pull together Richard's Tempest. It been really refreshing to build something that moves along so fast. Beats a foamy hands down!

If you were going for a painted finish, BP/PVA gives a very paintable finish which is as cheap as chips. The methods have most recently explained by Ron on this forum in his build of the Warbird Replicas FW190 and Tempest. Its also pretty good as a veneer substitute over a foam core, with or without additional spars. It provides a smooth surface which can then be either painted or film covered

I have both the 1 m and 1.5 m Thing with a 25FP glow and an 32 glow, great models both for haring around or slow flight. A cut down cap from a large bottle of fabric conditioner makes a really good 'jetpipe' to finish off the back of the fus. The larger one has an added foan cockpit / deck. Both are covered with brown paper / pva and then painted

I always flew Thumbs on Top until trying helicopters when I moved to a tray. Initially I found flying fixed wing with a tray very awkward but grew to prefer it. About this time I also morphed to using very long control sticks which had buttons on the left stick (Multiplex) which I also liked for the precision control it seemed to promote. The only down side was the bulk of the tray in transportation and then some TX damage when something fell on the TX/Tray combo. Now I've gone full circle back to Thumbs on Top just because it keeps the TX in its case duting transport and storage. My take on the situation having done all that is that 'pinch' flying is more precise, even better with long sticks, but for general flying Thimbs on Top is good enough. Like the mode 1 / mode 2 debate, its whatever floats your boat.

Just to round this topic off, Here is a photo of the former owner of these engines, Jim Bridgewood from Doncaster in 1956, after winning the Eddie Riding Trophy at RAF Woodvale with his model of the Heston Phoenix, complete with retracting u/c. No radio in those days

Now moved on to a new Custodian. Thanks to all those who responded. regards stu k

Pete Russell, Ian Peacock, Chris Golds, Boddo, latterly Alex Whittaker. all good writers with something to say. I do find that the mags in recent years are not so good, Last month was particularly thin