leccyflyer

Posted by Phil Wood on 18/11/2010 20:41:20: I could be wrong then sorry, ......I have a old second hand Zagi that I've fitted a fuz to, (my avatar) and when I stripped it, it was all EPP.They probably altered them in later models to save on the cost. Pol. There are different versions of the original Zagi and it's smaller cousin the Razor. Nothing to do with alteration to save cost, more to do wit the job that they were  meant to do. The Zagi was available in all EPP or EPP leading edge only and the Razor was all black EPP. My ten year old  Zagi E400 is black and white - EPP leading edge, EPS for the rest of the wing panel. My 9 year old Razor is all EPP.

As a venture that is intended to be commercial that pretty much excludes all of the very obscure types and so it's (IMO) a fine line to be walked between recognisable and over-modelled. As regards airliners and the like then once it gets beyond twins and into jets/ducted fans you are getting into much more specialised territory and excluding huge sections of the potential market place.  Given where the hobby is at the moment any design will need to include electric and IC options - which makes it a bit difficult for jets.  Single engined warbirds make for popular plans for a very good reason, they are popular aeroplanes.

The aeroplane wants to be something sufficiently recogniseable as to generate enough people who want to build it, but sufficiently obscure so as to not be over-modelled already. Here's a few potential candidates from my "must build one day"  1. Douglas Boston - an electric twin in the Flair Beaufighter sort of size, big enough for retracts and flaps.2. Bell P-39 Airacobra - very undermodelled aeroplane - a 1/6th scale version of this little beauty would pan out at about 68" span - big enough for a tricycle set of retracts and flaps.  3. Grumman Martlet  - 1/6th scale or thereabouts, same deal as for the P-39.  The above would all appeal to UK and US markets

Is it me or does that look like a 1/8th scale Mosquito with a 1/6th scale fin

Thought I recognised the Thelwall Viaduct there at the beginning

Looks like Lymm...

Torque isn't everything - the robustness of the gear train is (or should be) an important part of the decision. Looking at the diddy output gears on some mini and micro servos the teeth are little more than flash. Some of those seem to strip if you look at them the wrong way.

I can't generally use CA without such precautions as a mask, a fan, odourless CA etc, because of a long standing sensitivity to CA fumes. Trouble is that I was up against it yesterday. I'd promised to do an aeromodelling session with the local scout troop and I've been away on business so all the preparation was a bit of a rush. One part of the pre-assembly is making up the wing seat for the chuck gliders that the scouts make and fly themselves. It's formed from two small 1cm lengths of triangular section balsa glued to a 25mm length of 3mm liteply. I thought that since it was only a series of small drops of medium CA that I'd be okay. Should have known better than that. 60 drops later - 2 per wing seat - and my chest was tightening. Five hours later and my sinuses were blocked, my nose was streaming like a tap and I had a blinding headache. After a sleepless night, this morning dawned on a distinctly groggy head, completely blocked up and not very nice set of hasal passages and raspy lungs. Never again - clear!  

Don;t think so BEB, I'm grounded tomorrow, having a new exhaust fitted to the model transporter

Thomas - tomorrow is the indoor CHEFS meeting at Deeside Ice Rink, Queensferry - 12pm until 4pm. The forecast for tomorrow is pretty grim so there will probably be a decent turn-out at the indoor.

There's a couple of famous bits of graffiti, one of which has a bit of a link to that last one. It's long been the fashion for some city churches to have huge posters outside, bearing messages of evangelism. In the 60's in Liverpool a church had the message posted on the wall  "Jesus Saves!" to which some wag had added "...but St John scores from the rebound!". In a similar vein, one of those giant posters, on the church wall next to the #86 bus stop asked "Cometh the Day Of Judgement, where shall thou be? to which had been added "..still waiting for the Bl******  86!"

Looks like a Eurofighter with the canards at the back

Oh, I have every sympathy too, and would definitely query such a charge in that example.  My point is that many of the complaints about being ripped off because the postage and packing being charged is more than the cost of the stamp and envelope are not being realistic, in ignoring the staff costs and the costs of doing business. I'd be a bit concerned about encouraging customers to use the threat of "the power of the internet word of mouth" though.  Very often the person starting a thread to use the internet as a weapon -not that this thread should be taken as such - will find that it backfires on them as satisfied customers, with reasonable expectations, tend to react unfavourably where all possible avenues of conflict resolution have not been explored, before dropping that "I-bomb".

Posted by Biggles' Elder Brother on 06/11/2010 23:22:00: Well leccy - sort of "yes" and yet "no".   A lot of mail order in our field are shops. In practice the shop staff make up the mail order stuff during the quiet period at the start of the day when not many customers are in. So its a bit hard to see the argument for the full cost of the time of the person concerned.   Also, if I were to go into the shop in person serving me would take the time of the assistant anyway. But usually when I order mail order I pay the same price as I would on the personal visit. But now suddenly I have to pay for the time of the person? It doesn't take that much more time to process a mail order than it does to serve a customer. In fact given how indecisive and chatty many customers are in model shops mail order is probably more efficient!   Those firms that are purely mail order have even less case - afterall their overheads are nothing like that of a shop keeper.   I don't deny that there is possibly some cost to the business is providing mail order and they are perfectly entitled to cover those costs. But the levels it is sometimes charged at are I believe designed to simply generate an additional line of profit!   BEB Nevertheless, a shop sending out a product mail order is doing so as a business and the time spent in making up those orders has to either be passed on to the customer or taken out of the profit margin.  Incidentally that's where the idea put up earlier in this thread - that each item should incorporate the postage and packing invisibly into the item itself  - fails completely. In the example cited  2mm treaded ro and separate 2mm nuts, such a system would be guaranteed to produce the undesired outcome of paying twice for one package. Indeed, purchasing eight items, with the postage invisibly incorporated into each, would result in paying 8 sets of postage charges for one package. It's a completely unworkable system.  As for what time is taken in making up a mail order then I guess it depends on how many orders there are, the complexities of the order, the systems that the mail order retailer has in place and other variables. Those will be different for different organisations.  In the end result there is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone has to pay for those additional services.  The major mail order outfits make no secret of this, the charges are stated up front when ordering and the choice is there, whether to order or not.

Just a general comment on P&P charges. Folks often complain about those charges and make comments like that the stamp was only 64p and the jiffy bag would only be 60p ,so why have I been charged £3.85?  The thing is that you are paying for the wages of the staff member, employed for the time for the order to be made up, packed, taken to the PO or to be collated with the thirty other orders put together the same day. Someone has to pay for all that and it is the customer, usually, who pays for it. That's a natural part of the cost of mail order. Tot up what it would cost in time, fuel and hassle to go and get that same item from that outifit, or another and that would probably be far more.

You can also slip a bit of silicone fuel tube over the crocodile clips, to stop them acting as a heat sink when soldering.

Or as an alternative just make up a soldering jig, using two wooden clothes pegs mounted at right angles to each other on a 4" square block of 1/2" balsa. Drill some holes in the base to take 2mm, 3,5mm and 4mm bullet connectors if you use them. Sorted .

Posted by r6Dan on 04/11/2010 12:07:51: @import url(http://www.modelflying.co.uk/CuteEditor_Files/Style/SyntaxHighlighter.css);@import url(/CuteEditor_Files/public_forums.css); @import url(http://www.modelflying.co.uk/CuteEditor_Files/Style/SyntaxHighlighter.css);@import url(/CuteEditor_Files/public_forums.css); Did you not read the bits saying I will be doing both A and B test to conform with any rules or  did you just skim over those to cause an argument ? Point proven by the way.....     Edited By r6Dan on 04/11/2010 12:10:03 Edited By r6Dan on 04/11/2010 12:10:30  Nope, I didn't skim over anything, I noted that you have not yet taken an "A" test as indicative of the relative level of experience that you currently have.  That, coupled with the remark that you made of getting in more stick time before embarking on obtaining the maximum size of model that you would be able to fly without " bits of paper and rubbish" like that, provides an indication of where you are up to in terms of the hobby.  Please don't take that the wrong way, but you cannot just blow away and ignore the legal requirements of moving up in model size. The consequences of doing so are potentially devastating.

Posted by r6Dan on 04/11/2010 11:49:06: I will be doing both my A and B certs as soon as I feel I am ready,TBH I`m not really a believer of having bits of paper to say you can do something,the proof is in the pudding so to speak,but (and this is not aimed at anyone specifically) in the model plane world I have noticed there are a number of busy bodies and rule enforces who love to quote rules and regulations so I think before I get myself such an airplane I would be best to cross the t`s and dot the lower case j`s     Those rules and regulations, as they refer to large models are the law of the land.  They are not "bits of paper and rubbish like that".  If you're not a believer in bits of paper to say you can do something then large models might not be the best sort of thing to get involved in.  As has been explained, in several of the above posts, there are legal requirements to operating models above a certain size.  There are, of course, also legal requirements for operating any size of model aircraft and all modellers should be aware of those. They are not particularly onerous, most of them are what folks might describe as "common sense", but they are there for the benefit of all and to safeguard our hobby.  They aren't  just "bits of paper and rubbish like that" either.

Posted by r6Dan on 03/11/2010 23:02:51: It wont be till next summer untill I get one so should have a fair few hours more stick time!@import url(http://www.modelflying.co.uk/CuteEditor_Files/Style/SyntaxHighlighter.css);@import url(/CuteEditor_Files/public_forums.css); How much stick time do you currently have?  As the previous post states large models are not a project to be embarked upon lightly. The responsibilities of flying such models start to become somewhat larger than for an "average" club-sized model.

Posted by buster prop on 01/11/2010 19:31:26: Most of us in our club fly on 2.4 now and usually all the 35MHz channels are available. The reason we have a 2.4 area on our club pegboard is so that if we were all flying  while someone else turned up he  wouldn't have to walk over to the pilot box to check that one of us isn't on 35MHz and just forgot to put a peg on the board. We think it's safer that way, rather than just letting members assume that no-one is on 35 because there are no pegs at all on the board.        Yep, that would be another excellent reason for retaining the use of the frequency pegboard and adding a 2.4ghz section to it.

Posted by Martin Harris on 01/11/2010 14:10:17: I don't think anyone is advocating abandoning frequency control for 35 MHz! As I mentioned earlier, the chaos I had imagined from dual users forgetting to use the 35 MHz pegboard hasn't happened (yet!) although I have presented all your other points in the past - however democracy ruled and I was out-voted on the issue.Edited By Martin Harris on 01/11/2010 14:11:28  It's the dual users, and the presence of both 35mhz and 2.4ghz at a single site that raises the issues. If everyone were on 2.4ghz then it would be quite legitimate to leave the frequency control entirely to the technology. Once it is in any part left up to the indivudals then some sort of system in place is going to help.  

There is no real benefit to be gained from not using a pegboard at a site where bith 35mhz and 2.4ghz is in simultaneous use and a number of useful elements that are omitted where no pegboard used for the latter.  In the first instance a quick check of the number of pegs on the board versus the number of flyers on the flightline is a useful check to be able to make, for 35mhz. A situation such as five flyers on the flight line but only four pegs on the board might make someone investigate first, rather than switching on. If 2.4ghz flyers don;t use a peg that useful 2nd line of defence is removed.  Secondly the reminder of using a peg and having to claim the 35mhz frequency is useful if one is using more than one transmitter . Getting out of the habit of pegboard disciplne and then switching on a 35mhz transmitter having flown all day on 2.4ghz is not desireable. Indeed I nearly got a Stearman in the back of the head as a result of such a failure, which I suggest might be more prevalent where pegboards were not required.  Whilst both bands are in use, in a peg-on frequency control stem,  it's useful for both bands to continue to use the pegboard.  The other thing is to imagine standing up in court answering why you had made the decision to abandon the frequency control system, in the event of a serious failure, resulting from a breakdown in frequency control.

Nothing difficult in that at all, the point I was making is that if someone is flying a model with 14 Nimh cells successfully and that entireset of data is completely omitted from the database, because of the inclusion of only lipos/lifes in the data then the entire set of information is lost.   That's all. It isn't an additional category that is needed it is merely not restricting the data shown in a particular column.  It is also forward looking. When, let's say for the sake of discussion something like "Na nanophoshphate polymer" batteries come to be - then Li poly might become as obsolete as NiMh are becoming now.

Like the guys said I wouldn't recommend using the same bolts to retain the engine and to hold the ballast. It's quite simple to stick a couple of self-tapping screws through the lead ballast and they ought not come out if screwed down nice and tght.