Nick Cripps

I'm not sure they are available separately, David, they are usually supplied as part of an aileron torque arm set. An alternative would be to use a 2mm ball link held in place with a nut either side. That would probably be better anyway, as it would take up any angular movement as the control arm moves through its arc.

When your arm aches? ?

Apparently still available but probably not the same formula now as my 50 year-old tin! Sorry, John, you can get back to the Mustang now ?

Beautiful model and flown so well by Steve - in my opinion one of the best pilots on the show circuit.

I see you have a tin of the best soldering flux in the world!

The FT-200 weighs in at 1334g with the standard prop washer & nut and the 2 silencers at 19g each.

I looked at the Graduate for my FT-200 but wanted to get a model in the air quickly so went for the Hangar 9 RV-4.

Just a small update on progress this time. The picture may not appear to show anything different from some previous ones but Smoke Trail has now been fuelproofed and is getting closer to being flight-ready. I used black Solarlac for the engine bay and then Clearcoat on the remainder of the fuselage and the flying surfaces; a single coat, brushed on. It's a pity that the picture doesn't do it justice as the colour has washed out somewhat. The red flying surfaces are much brighter in reality and the Clearcoat has given the whole model a good shine. Anyway, I'll leave it to dry for a few days before installing the rudder (hinged with thin aluminium) and attaching the undercarriage again. Then it's another job I'm not looking forward to: the dreaded windscreen ?

It's easier to beg forgiveness after the event than ask for permission beforehand!

My FT-200 arrived safely in the post this morning - 'tis a thing of beauty ? Many thanks, Jon, for following up on this suggestion and making it a reality.

Using up all your Solarfilm scraps? ?

Great, I was wondering if there were any planned for this year. I hope to get there one of the 2 days, John.

You'll have it finished for Easter Sunday at this rate...

Cross-drill and put an "R" clip through?

Scoville Stardust is listed twice: 169 & 174.

Same with waterplane flying but getting the float angle correct is more important when flying from water. Floats set at large negative angles can cause a model to leap off the water before a decent flying speed is reached causing the inevitable stall and a callout for the rescue boat. Probably no big deal on a Limbo Dancer with its low weight and high power but risky on higher-loaded models. I appreciate you were asking for aerodynamic affects but thought it worthwhile pointing out for any others who might be tempted to follow your example without thinking it through.

The other pet hate is seeing someone starting an i/c model with a transmitter strap hanging from his neck...

Yes, I hate to see that, too, and some pilots often have worse habits. We had one club member a few months ago who connected up the battery in his model then left it on a table, along with the transmitter, and walked back to his car 100 yards away to get something. The same guy, the week before, accidentally knocked a switch on the top of his transmitter when putting it down and the motor immediately started up at full power. I still don't know how he got away with all his fingers and other bodily parts intact.

I set floats up with the top surface parallel to the tailplane. You could go a degree or so negative but I think your Limbo Dancer is a bit extreme, Martin! You certainly notice the effect of the extra weight of floats on a model and, being well below the cg, they tend to make the model more stable in roll. The other effect is the increase in side area often helps knife-edge.

That didn't take too long to cut out from 1/4" balsa, taper with a razor plane and sand off the corners. It was then glued in place with balsa cement, with the glue fillet smoothed in the corners with a brushload of thinners, as per the fin, earlier. A quick splash of dope then it was covered with tissue to match the fuselage.

Just a few more little jobs to do before fuelproofing and getting Smoke Trail ready for flying. The first of these was to give the little lady some legs. I picked up a couple of small wheels at a swapmeet last weekend which look like they previously did duty on the noseleg of an EDF but have been pressed into service on Smoke Trail. They are not ideal for this model and I would prefer some of those old plastic Keikraft wheels if I can find them but will do for now. The undercarriage legs were made up from 14swg piano wire earlier in the build so the next stage was to solder some 2mm washers in place to locate the wheels. The wheels have plastic hubs and I was worried about the amount of heat used to solder the washers so made up some retainers from a length of copper wire twisted around the axle. These soldered better and I was able to fix them in place without damage to the hubs. The upper ends of the legs locate in torque boxes built into the fuselage and are held in place with a couple of small clamps made from a strip of 1/4" x 0.025 brass strip. To make these, I first annealed the brass by heating with a blow torch then used a drill press to fold the strip around 2 spare lengths of the piano wire. The clamps were cut to length, cleaned up with a file and drilled for self-tapping screws. Should have centre-punched before drilling ? And here she is, standing on her own 2 legs for the first time. And, just when I thought I'd finished the airframe, that last photo reminded me that I'd forgotten to make the small fuselage fairing to fit under the tailplane. Out with the scalpel and sanding block again...

Or sweep up some balsa dust from your next sanding session.

Well, not entirely true, KC. The other servo brands which don't have the tab, have 2 of the plug corners chamfered and corresponding cut-outs on the receiver to ensure they are inserted the correct way around. It is possible to get it wrong but is usually obvious if you do. Also note that if you use Futaba servos with other brands of receiver then not only do you have to cut off the tab but you also need to file a chamfer on the servo plug.

With 3 family birthdays in 2 weeks and (finally) some decent flying weather, albeit for a short period, plus numerous other jobs to do, poor little Smoke Trail has been pushed firmly down the pecking order of late. The odd few minutes to spare saw the covering completed on the wing which went well using Cover Grip as the adhesive. I found this much better than using wet PVA as I was able to use the heat of the covering iron to ease the Litespan around the edges, reducing wrinkles. I covered each panel underside first then each top surface from centre to tip rib. The actual tip sections were covered in a separate piece as described in the instructions which I found easy to do. When covering the tailplane, I had tried to do the top surface and tips in one piece but couldn't remove the resulting wrinkles with either heat or shrinking dope. These were cut away and new tip covering was added. There's a bit of colour change where the 2 pieces of covering overlap but it's not too obvious. The final job completed today was gluing the fin in place. For this I used good old balsa cement and, once positioned, I ran a brush loaded with cellulose thinners along the join line to smooth it out and form a small fillet. Here's what it looks like now:

Nice addition to the fleet, Paul. I picked up a barely-used Max Thrust Aggressor complete with thermal wing extension, but I paid a bit more than that!