Braddock, VC

Slacken the glowplug a turn-ish then try again, soon as it gets going tighten the plug back up.

That's the finale on me trying to be helpful

I don't know if all are aware but the telephone preference service, (TPS) now applies to cell phones, too. tpsonline.org.uk

I've not been to the nats since 2005 so I won't either miss it or wring my hands over it, MOG that I am. If the FF one is on I'll make the trip up. I suspect that the relative ease with which we can obtain hard to come by items cancels out the need to make the trip to buy (or over buy) the supplies we think we need. I'll miss the bring and buy but it's a hell of a way to go just for that.

Having said that os f plugs are normally robust, I have an OS 40 pre surpass 4 stroke I bought new in 83 or 84 and it's still on its original plug, I swapped an engine for an OS 52 surpass in the mid 90s that came with a saito plug complete with bent central post and it's still in there. Que sera, sera. Don't lose sight of the fact it made us all look mugs and reinforces my belief that we always look for the worst case scenario when a quick cheap fix is the answer.

Go and sit on the naughty step ?.

A picture paints a 1000 words, here's 2000 + I bought it from machine mart in 2008, not only does it pull prop drivers, in my hands up to 180 4s, 160 nitro 2 s and 35cc gas. (I've not tried it on anything larger ), it also pulls battery terminals and windscreen wiper drive hubs, bearings on electric motors ( auto not model) I think they are about a tenner. The engine in the pic is a turnigy 26cc gas. At the other end of the scale it's also pulled the prop driver from an ed hornet which was a real pig to get shifted. Btw always leave the prop nut fitted, they come off at a rate of knots. BTE

Just my £0.02 - check that the valve timing is correct, it's quite easy to do on the 48, two cap screws to take out on the camshaft cover, prior to this set the engine at tdc. When the engine is at tdc there is a punch march (indent) on the end of the camshaft against one of the gear teeth, this should be in line with the pushrod tubes and the centre of the camshaft. It doesn't really matter if the indent is adjacent to the pushrods or 180 degrees opposite, it should be in line with those pushrods. If it isn't then you should reset it. FWIW they will run with the camshaft one tooth out of synch, only in one direction out of synch and I can't remember which. I did hear a story that if you set them up 90 degrees out of synch you can run the engine in opposite rotation but I can't confirm this. Next time I change bearings I'll give it a try.

Out flying today, using my 14th iirc wot4. I chose to power it with an OS 52 Surpass 4 stroke which is the least powerful engine I have ever used apart from an HB 50pdp in an early mk 2 back in 1982. I found an apc 12.25 x 3.75 prop and it matches the combination exactly. I won't say there's unlimited vertical or that the loops are the largest I've seen but it doesn't seem to be much different to one I had that used a saito 82 as prime mover. Ordinarily I would have used a 13 x 6 or a 12x6 on this engine as I was worried it would over-rev on this prop. Well pleased with my day out. Oh and it came back in one piece!!!!

If you get a text from phone number +447423596933 advising you that you have set up a new payee on your bank account and further advising you to click on a link to cancel the payee (in my case it purported to be from Santander) you would be wise not to click the link. If you are concerned go into to your bank account as you normally do and check to see if you have set up a new payee. Just saying.

BTW set up the tx for 7 channel operation, IIRC you do this under parameter on the menus.

Assumes tx is on beforehand.....

Button is between aerials, depress and hold it down switch on. Mine flashes red then flash green then solid green. HTH.

BTW that's one of the stuffed gimbals at the bottom of the pic. I take much more care of my equipment nowadays ?

Back in the day (1990s) I was given a sanwa infinity system, I used to have an old land rover and I put the tx on the roof, forgot about it and drove off. My insurers were very sympathetic as I hadn't noticed until I got home, retraced my steps but never found the tx. Insurers pay out bought me a futaba ff8, I put this on the bonnet and just started to drive down our road when youngest warned me about the tx, When I braked it shot off the bonnet and hit the kerb and was knackered, payout bought me a ff9, driving back from the field I must have left it on the roof and the club sec followed me home and handed it to me, the back of the case had come apart and knocked off the module pcb, got a 10 cg and the same thing happened to this one except the front got knocked about and wrecked both the gimbals. I got a 14sg this time and, as in all the previous incidents, the insurers didn't want the wrecked sets. So they were put in the cupboard, why I don't know. During the lockdown I came upon them and wondered if I could do anything with them. Long story short, I managed to salvage both gimbals from the ff9 and, whilst not identical, they fit. I also stripped out all the switches as one of the levers on the 10cg had broken. Fitting was quite easy, chopped off the connecting wires one by one, soldered the functional gimbals in and put heat shrink around and it's been working for about 7 hours now. Should be a pic hereabout, the cg10 isn't 100% the carrying handle got knocked off at the accident site and I'll have to decide if a new rear case is warranted for what is, effectively, plan c as I have a 6EX to back up the 14sg and this would be the fall back for the 6EX. All together an interesting little challenge.

I noticed the thread on mylar covering, something I toyed with some years back but, being a lazy so and so covering a model twice then decorating it didn't appeal. I bumped into an old (now late) acquaintance about that time (10 years or so back?), his forte was wakefields and he said smart money is using icarus PC 31, this is a material for making kites, a kind of ripstop nylon that is actually polyester with a polycarbonate coating. At that time I was happy to continue using solarfilm products but nowadays, needs must when the devil rides. Back then it was about £20 for 2 square metres but, if you google it you'll find you can buy similar today at around a fiver a metre off the roll which is about 1.5 metres wide, btw the 31 in the name refers to the weight of a square metre in grammes. The material heat shrinks. I'll give you the cons first as they are significant to armchair modellers 1. It needs a solvent type adhesive due to the polycarbonate coating, you can try but I settled on a heat activated adhesive called heatseal 2000 (google it), this is noxious stuff and needs to be treated with plenty of open air. It's about a fiver a bottle. FWIW balsaloc didn't work too well. Some folks actually use contact adhesive but that's a real chore. 2. When using the adhesive it is best, where the material overlaps, to paint both mating faces with the glue. This glue is extremely tenacious so practice first and get it right first time. 3. It is permeable, ever so slightly, if you use IC power it is best to seal it with one of the fuel proofers, gliders and rubber powered can use thinned dope. I don't do electric so can't comment. I'd suggest that even with an unthinned coat of fuel proofer it doesn't weigh as much as untreated solartex, just my view you understand. 4. When cutting it it seems to blunt scalpel blades much more readily than say solartex. 5. Needs a significantly higher heat seating on your iron to shrink it than solarfilm. The pros 1. many colours available. 2. about 1/3 the weight of solartex 3. The chinese have been mass producing it and it's brought the cost down. 4. Once glued and shrunk in place it seems quite stable, ie the sun doesn't make it sag. My junior 60 is stripped ready to recover as soon as the fine weather gets here. I also have a Great Planes slowpoke 40 to finish off and I'm going to use it on that, too.

IPA is alcohol and a solvent too boot, why would you want to use it, are you a printer by trade? FWIW it tends to act like methanol, ie absorb water. After the last flight, run the engine at full throttle for at least 15 seconds, pull off the fuel pipe to stop it and whilst hot pour in your after run oil, auto transmission fluid is good for this purpose btw. Some folks drain remnants of fuel out of the carb. Flick the engine over multiple times to get the oil round it. Store the model nose up with the throttle closed and if the bearings were good before the last flight they should be good when you reactivate it.

Thanks for that Nigel, however my days of hot rod engines are receding fast, so much so that I'm considering having a pre-estate sale of my superfluous equipment ✝️

No, definitely a longstroke one, intended for old aerobatic (F3A?) planes. I do not remember if they were assembled from ready made parts but I think I remember that there were around 100 (not sure about that figure) made and the money involved wasn't too unreasonable. It was widely discussed on either rcu or rcg but, as usual, I came in at the end and they were gone.

Nigel, is that an early one? I tried to buy one of the longstroke ones they knocked out for the US market a few years back but they sold the whole run quicker than Glastonbury tickets. I've never had any trouble with the pump on mine, but there again I've never taken it apart. Just works, but I always use a filter twixt tank and engine.

Here's a YS 45, bought this enginein about 1997, very second hand, it's still the most powerful and usable 45 I've owned. I bought it from nexus when they were in Charing. The mini pipe was painted blue to match an ARC Jupiter I had, it made it and an acrowot I had ballistic. Lat plane I flew it in was a mijet lookalike and with a 9x9 prop it outperformed me significantly. Despite having had at least 5 owners and being flown regularly from 97 through 2017 it still has compression to die forand loves 20% fuel.

Wot, no Jett engines?

My take on it, for landing is gusty conditions they are very helpful, even more beneficial when landing heavily loaded models eg warbirds. I haven't used them on trainers and I haven't trained anyone. I use the Orange fasst combination gyro/receiver and also have used the orange standalone gyro, which is installed between the rx and servos. Both take me some time to set up but at least two of my models are still in service and can be flown on days when it is a bit iffy. They can also help tracking when taking off but they are nfu at low speed and my ones proved a handful when the model crosses the threshold of reaching a speed which gives control "bite" when getting airborne, amusing if you enjoy squirreling. For this reason I don't find them helpful on extremely lightly loaded models eg vintage planes which tend to be slow both in responding and in flying speed, tried one on my Falcon, not helpful at all. The most beneficial aspect is when everything goes belly up and one can murmur *&%$?@ gyro went berserk ......... whether or not one is fitted. I understand they have their uses when landing on mars as well.

Westonuk deliver glofuel foc if bought in 4 x1gallon amounts. Use aspen fuel for petrol engines, no smell.. You can buy it ready mixed about £22 a gallon.

This thread is the limit, I've avoided this tripe for god knows how long and now it shows up here..