leccyflyer

Think that's me done for this week, with three more unserviceable models - four in a week - two broken, with two equipment breakages. 😢 First flight of the day I inexplicably tip stalled my favourite Spitfire just as I put the gear up and spiralled in from about 30 feet, completely trashing the fuselage. It's the third time I've crashed it in the past few years and the foam is just getting a bit too soft and deformed. Looks like it's time to deploy the spare fuselage. Next up was the Electrifly Hellcat, which I was putting through it's paces, good as gold for Derek to get some pictures, really enjoying this model and said I'd just try a three turn spin towards the end of the flight. That worked beautifully, but on recovering and continuing on my way the Hellcat was very reluctant to turn right. I was having to hold almost full opposite aileron in to keep her straight, babied her back to the strip and managed to land with no damage, to find that the extended aileron servo horn was massively offset, maybe 40 degrees, with a huge amount of left aileron with the sticks in the centre. Something had slipped coming out of that spin and it'll be a real pain to get access to the servo, as it's hot glued into the fuselage, upside down. The remaiden of the T33 didn't work out well, with the anticipated sag after launch just intersecting the ground, not an impact as such, wings level, but with the motor still running there was an audible click and that was an impeller blade gone from the new fan. So another painful cutting apart to get at the fan unit, I wasn't the only one having mishaps, we all heard another pop as Jim's scratch built T33 suddenly lost power and radio, barrelling into the ground and being almost totally destroyed. The burst capacitor on the ESC showed the cause of the loss and she's not repairable. There were also a couple of gliders damaged and it was looking like Black Thursday. The long awaited maiden flight of Jim W's Catalina was prevented by a balky motor, which was cutting out when jiggling one of the motor wires, so that will have to wait for another day. Luckily some old favourites came to the rescue and we also had some great fun with multiple wee jet flights, chasing each other around the sky, Derek's big Super Hornet carved up the sky majestically and Jim W's Mosquito put that flak tower on top of Scolty Hill to the sword, so the day wasn't a total loss.

Aye - they didn't even fall off the aeroplane.😉 I usually put repairs to one side for a while, but I'm going to crack on with these ones, as I'm very keen to see those lads make their jump.

Warm and sunny leaving home early this morning for the ninety minute trip to my old club field, with the prospect of a couple of maiden flights and a couple of test flights. The forecast was for the wind to die and switch from a rather unfavourable NW, to a better SE during the day. On arrival the wind was a bit stronger than forecast, but nothing to worry about - always start with a wee fella flight and the refinished Kittihawk I in desert air force colours looked great against the deep blue sky. It then proceeded to turn into a proper curate's egg of a day, with downsides in the form of a few crashed models, ranging from minor bumps to total write offs, but more positively some good flying to be had of a large number of models for the dozen or so flyers at the field. I was really pleased to get some good flights in after a maiden with my Electrifly profile Hellcat. The control surfaces and recommended throws for this were a bit extreme by my normal standards, but it's essentially a militarised Shockflyer meant for combat, so I flew the maiden at low rates with half the maximum throw recommended. The model was as good as gold, the geared brushless motor taking her off from a gentle underarm had launch and cavorting about the sky, as per the type. The rudder in particular is just crazy, with just a small application the model essentially stops dead and does a 90 degree flat turn in her own length - would be a great evasive manoeuvre in combat. Flying piccies hopefully to follow once Derek has processed them. That and the recently tamed Brewster Buffalo were my highlights of the day. Less good was an over-elevated steep climb out and stall with Jim's lovely scratch built Fiat BR20 on her maiden flight, but he got away with just knocking the nose off and is easily repairable. The Fiat is ultimately destined for my Battle of Britain collection in a few months time. Jim got right back on the horse with good flights from his Vampire and Waco - the Vampire in particular is quite superb in the air. As the wind increased in strength conditions were perfect for Mike to ad to his Tiger Moth flights with a rare outing for his Me109 style autogyro, which looked and sounded great. I had high hopes of a mass drop of diddy Fallschimjager from my VMAR Ju-52 and had set up the rather fiddly 3D printed multi parachute drop module, which is designed to release four parachutists, one at a time, in a stick. That would have been great fun if I hadn't done my signature why don't we let the model take off too early, turn left and spin into the ground manoeuvre, The resultant cartwheel looked terminal at the time, but a post-mortem showed that the damage was nowhere near as bad as it looked, having just popped both wings' sub-spars off the centre section spar and should be repairable. Might need to cut a few of those ungainly offset flap and aileron hinges and the hardest part will likely be salvaging and refitting the preprinted covering over the damaged bits. With that crash and swiping the nose off my Hawk again in a failed hand launch my bottle had gone for the planned remaiden of my remotored T33 as the skies grew ever more grey, so that will have to wait for another day.

The Wot Trainer and UNO Wot are completely different models and AFAIK they always have been.

FWIW I find the wee cheap transmitters that are supplied with the Volantex 400mm span models are amazing in what they offer at that price point - the differential between models supplied with a transmitter and without a transmitter is about £17 for example. For that you get a compact transmitter that has telemetry - low battery warning on the model, on the transmitter itself, range or poor signal warning on the transmitter when the reception falls below a certain level, lost model finder that helps locate a downed model using that signal strength capability, as well as the not often used Return to Base -which actually just reverses the direction that the model was launched in, giving an about turn. That's on top of the functionality to fly the model with one of three discrete gyro settings, an aerobatic button and clear indication of bind. For seventeen quid I find that remarkable value for money. The wee models can be flown more smoothly than just about any other models in my fleet and not just when it is flat calm either. My only criticism is that after a lot of use the aerobatic button can get a bit sticky, sir, Some of my clubmates make use of a single transmitter for all models, binding it to the model before each flight, which is just a matter of connecting the battery to the model before switching on, putting the model in a stable orientation and waiting a couple of seconds for the bind. Personally I prefer to have a transmitter with each model, with everything stored in the original box, which helps with storage and safe transport to the field. It also means that I can loan a model or two to my clubmates who don't have a model with them, so that they can take part in the fun of our mass flights. I've been known to loan three models out for clubmates to take part. The alkaline AA batteries last for ages - I've been flying my Me109 for a couple of years (actually 3 years in October) with well over 200 flights under her belt and only swapped the batteries a few weeks ago in response to the low tx battery warning,

If it's like any other canopy glue the usual advice is to leave it at least overnight, until fully cured.

Moderate rain this morning, but for once the wind had dropped and it was very calm, The old farmers say "Rain before seven, fine by eleven" and that's how it looked, the rain stopped about 9am and the Met Office rain radar predicted it would bypass us for a few hours, coming back after noon. Got to the field very wet underfoot, overcast, but flat calm and just a few of us there, we got a flight in each, before the drizzle started spitting. Retired to the hut, but unfortunately it just got heavier and wasn't flyable. I never fly in the rain, as it's a problem if you wear glasses and I'm not confident that 2.4ghz performs to it's usual standards in the rain. It showed no sign of clearing, but I guess it might have done in an hour, but we decided to just cut our losses, So, effectively rain stopped play.

https://www.stefanv.com/rcstuff/qf200209.html Assuming a brushless set up with an ESC equipped with a Battery Elimination Circuit (BEC), which will supply a 5v supply to the receiver, the above basic set up will work. If the motor runs in reverse, just swap any two wires with each other to get the correct rotation. The servo plugs fit into the receiver into the individual receiver channel sockets. The order of those sockets vary between manufacturers. Forget about fuses, switches and separate receiver batteries if you have a BEC equipped ESC, you switch on by just connecting the battery.

Ah, it's an Su31 1.4m span! Inexplicably I somehow read that as Stuka and was instantly interested. 😄

That's a massive Stuka Geoff - 311.4m wingspan 😮 That's what I mean about gathering as much information on CoG as possible, the manual is incorrect quite often. If you are lucky there will be an erratum included with the kit, but not always. Reviews and online posts about a particular model are a very valuable source of real world experiences.

That's pretty much what I do, apart from CofG, where I gather as much information as possible and if not available go for 28% as a starting point, I read in the mag the other day about balancing the model, where the author described how he balances the model saying that he balances the model with a nose down attitude, which was claimed as the correct method. Personally I balance it so that the model is level -ie balanced, but recognise that slightly nose down would be slightly nose heavy and okay for a maiden flight.

Video not found. We've had a succession of private jets in the past couple of days, all going from Farnborough to land at Dundee. It's very unusual to hear the sound of a jet descending here, but on hearing a couple yesterday, looked on ADS-B and that's what they were, Not sure what that is about -it's the Game Fair starting today, but would posh shooters really travel up by biz-jet from the south of England?

I do know of folks who have reschemed their previously Russian models as Ukrainian . Not something that I'd do, but also worth bearing in mind that Yak is a Soviet aeroplane, rather than anything to do with the current regime, so it's a tenuous link for folks to make such changes. I only have a couple of Russian aeroplanes, both Sukhoi pusher "jets" and they still retain their red stars. For WWII USSR aeroplanes it's a no brainer, they were our staunch allies at the time, plus you've got her posed next to an FW190 with a naughty cross on the fin 😉 They both look very nice and should stay as they are.

I'm not at all surprised that the vast majority of modellers don't check their creations or purchases with an incidence gauge. If they are following any decent set of instructions then they would have checked the alignment of the tailplane laterally, checked that the tailplane and fin are square and proceeded on that basis. The vast majority of modellers almost certainly do not own, or have never used an incidence mater. FWIW I've got a Robart Incidence meter, as I thought it was a good idea. It's in a draw and it hasn't been used in donkey's years. If one is purchasing an ARTF or building from a kit then it's a pretty fair assumption to make that the incidences ought to have been sorted out by the manufacturer. If one is building from a plan or from scratch, and especially with a complex model, then the case for using the meter is stronger, but I expect that would represent a small minority of modellers - for most of us TLAR is good enough.

Doesn't read like an AI Bot to me and, as has been pointed out previously, shouldn't a sufficiently credible bot able to ask a question ought to be able to answer one as well? Kind of like it shouldn't take too long to figure out how to program a bot to tick a box saying I Am Not A Robot.😉

That fella really shouldn't be sitting at the end of the runway like that TBH. We used to sometimes watch from the end of the runway at various shows and active airfields, but having watched a DH Venom run into the perimeter fence after failing to get away cleanly at a show, we stopped doing that pronto..

Sorry - just re-read the OP and see that you are looking for a prop and spinner as well.

Anyone else seeing the obvious disconnect between the two bolded sections in that post. This thread and the comments therein are providing feedback on the magazine, in the section devoted to feedback on the magazine. It isn't whinging or complaining, it is considered feedback. As for spreading the plan build articles across several issues, I certainly was not talking about complex, multi sheet plan issues and the extended build treads associated with those, I was talking about relatively simple models, which always used to be covered in a single issue - sometimes even two, alternative but related plans in a single issue.

We've covered this many times in this forum and in other fora as well. The position of the vast majority of clubs actively works against them being readily accessible to potential flyers unless they can drive and have transport. This isn't the 1960's and, even assuming that you could encourage youngsters away from their devices and social media, parents are very unlikely to be happy with their children cycling three miles to visit a club on a regular basis. Notwithstanding the difficulties in transporting models and gear on a bike - yes, it can be done and some of my flying pals do it to this day - that would demand direct parental involvement, for hours at a time. The song got it wrong, the children are not our immediate future. As it has been stated and restated, the potential growth demographic to replace the natural wastage amongst model flyers in in the over 40's. Those are the folks with transport, potential disposable income, possibly a past acquaintance with the hobby in their youth and, as they get older, potentially more time to indulge. AS for those other modelling related activities - model railways, Airfix kits etc - those have definitely seen an increase in interest and activity since the airing of TV programmes promoting those interests. Social media certainly indicates that to be the case, with significant numbers of new posters on many of the static model builder pages for Airfix etc starting their posts with the information that the kit that they have just built has been their first build in 40 years. Youngsters watch very little TV these days, for them the media of preference is shorts and reels - video and mixed media clips no longer than a couple of minutes. The under 30's are not the main target audience to preserve this hobby.

The content is another area, not necessarily linked to the diminished quality of the reproduction of photographs. I've noted a somewhat disturbing trend in the past few years where some articles - including plan build articles and even simple reviews of ARTF models - are spun out over two, three or even four issues. I'm sorry, but if a free plan is provided for a model, the construction article really should be contained entirely within that issue not "we built the wing this month, tune in next month for the fuselage build and the following month for the flight report". That seems to be increasingly happening with the magazine,

When you speak of regions encouraging clubs to amalgamate there are a number of considerations. Every club is different and has it's own character. If you want to amalgamate two clubs you are then needing to mix two different cultures, two sets of members and there is a very real risk of developing as effectively two clubs sharing a common site. If that is an entirely new site - not the previous home of a particular group of members - you've a chance that a new club atmosphere and culture could be developed. If, however you choose to use one of the clubs original site, then there will always be an alpha and beta set amongst the members, probably until all the old guards have gone. Not a very happy situation. The solution to that problem is for members to embrace change and work together to establish an entirely new club culture. Good luck with that. The other thing is distances. Certainly up here in the less populated parts of the country clubs tend to be quite far apart and there is a reluctance to travel a reasonable distance - say more than 30 minutes - to the club field. Personally I don't have an issue with travelling - I regularly travel three and a half to four hour round trip for three to four hours flying at my old club, alternating with two to three hour flying sessions at my local club, less than ten minutes away. En route I pass one other club about an hour away, which I had been considering joining, as they have a new site with much longer runways for some of my models and have always given a great welcome when attending their fly-ins. However, some of my clubmates have said that an hour is much too far to travel for a field and I think that attitude is quite widespread. As noted above, purchasing one's field is a big financial commitment and one which is inherently risky in that your new field could be taken away from you on any number of grounds for objection - noise being the most obvious one. Even with planning permission your field can most definitely still be at risk. The solution to that is good noise control, but even that is no guarantee and encountering local objection or official pressure on your activities can result in major problems that can sometimes prove terminal. Having the flexibility to move about to a different piece of rented ground is maybe preferable to losing everything, including that large financial commitment in the face of strong opposition.

I got one of the Parkside Dremel style rechargeable rotary tools last time that they were out John. Unfortunately they come equipped with a set of collets, rather than a four jaw chuck. That is manifested in it being awkward to fit small drill bits and it has too much vibration to use for accurate drilling. I relegated mine to sanding and grinding duties with mounted stones, where the vibration and poor centering are less of an issue. For accurate drilling and cutting I use the chuck equipped Minicraft drill and real Dremel, neither of which are cordless,

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