leccyflyer

Having received very good advice recently from Paul on the topic of printing spinners I can certainly vouch for it being a valid concern in terms of sending out stls for the spinners, without knowing the print quality that will result. Having moved on from PLA, where a print of a well designed Me109E spinner for a pal in PLA did not inspire confidence, showing clear signs of delamination. I reprinted in ABS and the results were very much better, such that the model has flown multiple times with no issues at all. That design did have substantially thicker walls than others. In then printing a larger four bladed spinner for an EFlite Spitfire XIV in ABS I found that my default settings made for a very much less robust spinner, which was easy to break away portions of the print at the prop cutouts and I would never have put that on a model. Speaking to Paul prompted me to try PETG, slow down the print speed to improve inter-layer adhesion and the result came out every bit as strong as a moulded nylon spinner, even though the walls were much thinner than on the Me109E spinner. That spinner completed the Spitfire repairs and has flown many times now, with no problems - the pilot was delighted with the replacement of an unobtainable spinner. If you chose to provide 3D pointed spinners then the responsibility for the operation of the spinner should lay with the user, though I'm not sure what legal basis a disclaimer or waiver might have. Selling the STLs would put the responsibility for the safety of the spinner firmly in the park of the user who printed it and will then use it. I would be happy to either provide a waiver in addition to my word, stating that the responsibility for using the spinners would be entirely mine own, whether purchasing a printed spinner or an STL to print my own. Finally it is you correctly identify the risk nowadays when you say that you do not want to lose your house, which is completely understandable. This is the internet though and it is gratifying that you were not worried about "loosing" your house instead.

Meeting at the club field today, with strong winds forecast, but still put a couple of models in the car, just in case. Ended up just flying the wee Volantex Me109 and Wot 4 Foam-E, both of which handled the wind pretty well, Most amazing was the ridge lift off the downwind side of the hill. Both models just climbed like a lovesick angel going into wind. Have never seen it anyway near that good. At one point I was sharing the booming lift with a Red Kite, who was doing the same. Wish I'd packed an electric glider, but the lift was so good even Jim's Waco biplane was soaring. 😎👍

Unfortunately Ron there does appear to be a number of eBay sellers who offer 3D printed bits -especially pilots - some of which are actually stl files which are sold via the file repository sites. It is one thing selling 3D printed pilots which have been printed from files uploaded to Thingiverse for free, though not very ethical, but it is a bit different selling 3D printed pilots from files that are offered for sale. That sort of piracy ultimately results in prominent 3D figure modellers spoiling their own work by adding engraved trademarks to their figures. Okay, they are on the back, but for some of the figures that I've paid for the file that has rendered them unusable and actually ensures that I won't be paying for any more of his models.

The highlights being the super glossy finish, cowl the size and shape of a pedal bin, the Super Mario racing car pilot and that dreaded log on the tail.

Nice job Dave - will look forward to seeing the Tempest in action soon. 😎👍

World Models produced a decent sized ARTF Tempest a while back, but it never quite clicked with me, there was just something a bit off with the shape, mostly around the cowl area and it was irredeemably shiny to boot. The nail in the coffin though, which ensured that my cash stayed in my pocket, was the ridiculous printing of World Models logo on the tailfin. Don't know in what universe that could be thought of as a good idea.

Good job you're out in the boonies with that and likely with a more tolerant laissez faire attitude from any neighbours, that would be a site loser over here.

Depends on what your enjoyment of the hobby is all about, it certainly matters to a lot of folks. The other thing of course is that models spend several orders of magnitude on the ground than they ever do in the air. A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

..except it's scale outline has been spoiled by having a great lump of a silencer sticking out and probably several big holes cut in the cowl.

That's a very good point. I very rarely use Loctite, but on replacing a broken plastic motor mount on my repaired Parkzone Spitfire I noticed that all of the motor mounting screw had a blob of red Loctite, so duplicated that on the replacement. The motor mount fractured on the first flight, just like in your picture. Luckily I had another spare, which was installed with no Loctite. I won't be using it anywhere near any plastic fittings.

Hang on - weren't the bands on the full size Ocean Grey, rather than green.......

In danger of getting off topic, but the solution to excessive noise from small high revving props on flying wings is quite easy to solve. If you fit the same motor and prop to the front of the model, the noise reduction is dramatic. The buzz saw noise generated is due to the prop's proximity to the cut out in the trailing edge. Moving the prop back even just a few millimetres can halve the noise. Less easy to achieve in the very noisy prop-in-a- slot pushers, as there are two plates for the prop to interact with, other than making a much larger slot.

Have you tried using a pre-shrunk packet of encapsulating film? My pal Bob has used 125um laminating film for the rear turtle deck on his FT PRU Spitfire and it works brilliantly.

It's pretty bad that you need to spend that sort of money on an aftermarket silencer in order to make an engine practical to use at a club field. The manufacturers are letting their customers down by not solving the noise issue out of the box.

12" to the foot scale, not a club member's aeroplane, just visiting for the day........

Well done Murat, your warbird fleet continues to grow! BTW if it's 55" span that's one of the Cambrian Sports Scale Warbirds Spitfire IX kits, rather than the much smaller 42" Spitfire Funfighter. You'll find lots of useful information in this thread.

I'll still keep my OS .25SF, for nostalgic reasons, but doubt it will ever see another drop of fuel. I have a small number of small diesel engines, which will be installed in a couple of models -one that is ready to go now, one under construction and another possibility, as an unstarted kit. Again all for the sake of nostalgia and I would like to have flown at least two of them in time to take them to Pontefract for the Vintage and Single channel day. For me diesels are the real deal when it comes to nostalgia. No IC allowed at my local club field, so it will need to be at my old club field, or as a guest flyer somewhere. Sold nearly all my engines for very good prices about 15 years ago, then gave away most of the remainder to clubmates in more recent times, along with all the paraphernalia needed to get the things started, As I only ever bought good quality engines I didn't suffer from the unreliability that many of my clubmates suffered in the nineties and noughties. At last year's swapmeet a chap had a table full of little used glow engines, including some very nice ones, amongst them an Enya 15 and they were all listed at a pound a piece. He still had plenty left at the end of the day. Have never had, or wated to have, a petrol engine - from what I've seen and heard, they are generally noisy beasts unless taking extraordinary and often expensive pains, to make them quiet enough for club use. I doubt that I'll ever have one, but do have some larger models where they might be an option - never say never. Whilst some modellers enjoy tinkering with engines and consider them an important part of their enjoyment of the hobby, IC will continue, even glow power, provided the fuel, or at least the ingredients for the fuel continues to be available,

A feisty 80-year-old woman was arrested for shoplifting. Standing before the Judge, she was asked, " What did you steal?" "A tin of peaches," she replied. The Judge then asked her why she had stolen them. "I was hungry," she said. The Judge then asked her how many peaches were in the tin. She replied, “6”. The Judge then said, "Then, I will give you 6 days in jail." But before the judge could actually pronounce the sentence, the woman's husband spoke up and asked the Judge if he could say something. "What?" said the Judge. The husband said, "She stole a tin of peas as well."

Couldn't have been more different this morning , sunny, with big blue skies and scattered clouds. Windier than forecast, with a 5mph SW wind which increased in speed through the morning to 10-12mph and brought with it some spectacular lenticular clouds, one of which almost became spherical - it was like the sky was full of flying saucers. With that crosswind my PZ Mossie stayed in the car, but I had great fun flying the wee Spittie dogfighter, which was appropriate, since the mission for the day was a photo shoot of Bob's latest depron build, a lovely quirky Antonov AN-2 biplane, from the same designer - Thomas Buchwald. The Antonov exhibited the expected impressive STOL capabilities and the bog wheels really worked well. What I hadn't expected was how well she spins - fantastic flying qualities and a couple of very impressive flights. She ate up the gusty wind with no bother at all - apart from having to be put in the club hut between flights, so as not to blow away.

Chilly and overcast, so some hiding from the cold in the club hut, but not too bad a morning. The field had dried out really nicely last week, but a night of Biblical rain saw it very wet underfoot this morning. Flew a couple of Spitfires, Piper Super Cub and the wee Red Arrows Hawk in a trio with John and Geoff. A veritable fleet of replacements are on their way from China, so some recent Hawk attrition will be taken care of, in time for more mass launches once we get the blue skies back.

Not Only Did Jimmy Fail to get his Frisbee back - he grounded every aeroplane at Heathrow Airport.

I too have a number of Freewing models and have never had a problem with their servos. Durafly is a different matter - I've had multiple servo failures with Durafly models, causing at least three crashes, to the extent that I now routinely replace all of the servos in these models. I've also witnessed or directly heard of at least three other crashes with Durafly servos, attributed to in air failures.

Agree 100% Phil - for some time the first thing that I turn to with the magazine is Shaun's Retro Ramblings, as there is always something of interest in the nostalgic and more up to date line. I keep all my magazines and I reread them regularly, usually one at a time, at breakfast, chosen at random from the files. When the pile of re-read mags gets to more than a foot tall, it is carried back into where they are stored and the process repeats. Once I have three piles more than a foot tall, I have a big sort out of the mags back into order by month of publication and it starts off again. So you really notice how the mag has got more slender over the last 20 odd years. Since Tim Hooper's Bench Blog has finished I find that's another favourite regular column that is gone and it must be tricky to fill such boots. I think David Ashby is doing a good job in replacing Alex Whittaker's Weekenders column for the club flyer and contributing to reviews regularly, but I do take your point about previously unpublished contributors needing to chip in. I would miss the magazine dreadfully if it were ever to go and I think that we should all remember that without the magazine this, the premiere UK modelling forum, would almost certainly cease to exist. That would be catastrophic, given the degree of integration of build threads and suchlike, especially around the joint project like the Warbirds Replicas builds. Perhaps there is an idea for an article in itself, right there, drawn from the pages of this forum?

Just a bit of feedback from me, as a long time subscriber to the magazine. There appears to be a recent trend for splitting even the most mundane review articles across multiple issues. That is also becoming increasingly common for even relatively simple free plan builds - such as Mike Freeman's very interesting St8us flying wing design in this months magazine. I can understand complex plan builds, which may even require multiple plan sheets to be spread across several issues as extended projects, but surely the aim of the simpler free plan designs is to have folks build them fresh, in a short time frame. Having to wait further four weeks before seeing the second part of a build article for a model that could be built in less than a week, seems counter productive. The magazine has certainly got a lot thinner post Covid - where it was typically 120-130 pages and is now seemingly capped at 98-99 pages each month. It just feels like these articles, especially reviews of off the shelf ARTFs, being spread more thinly with the dreaded "To be continued in the next issue" appearing more frequently. The advertising for the new XFly Spitfire IX has been off the scale, with banner ads on the forum, multiple updates in the Counterpoint style news of coming models, then a two page introduction last month and now a six page review in this month's issue, with the promise of a further report after the model has actually flown. Regarding the model itself, I always say you cannot have too many Spitfires, but must we have yet another rendition of JE-J - the North Africa scheme is interesting and I might have been persuaded, but the wheels look awfy small for our grass strips. No mention of the most critical aspect of small Spitfire operations in the reviews- I'd suggest that most flyers in the UK do not fly from concrete or tarmac runways, so perhaps this could be addressed in the third article on what should be a model that can be put together and successfuly flown in a morning.