Matt Carlton

Read the plan, get to know it and understand what the designer intended and how to get there. Visualise how things fit together. If you can't make sense of it, ask before you get started. Cut out all of the bits as much as you can and put those bits in a box and make a kit. That way, you won't be scrabbling around to try to make/cut pieces on the hoof because you need part x to make part y fit to part z. It is a lot less hassle than trying to cut parts as you need them. Make a list of all the other bits that you will need and get them ready. You might find that some of them (snakes, servo mounts etc) need to be fitted during construction. Nothing more annoying than eg not being able to fit a top decking because you need to fit snakes inside first. Keep all the offcuts, however small. Scrap is really useful for fillets, gussets, filling gaps, making supports etc. Plan ahead and don't build yourself into a hole. For instance, finishing a fuselage before fitting the wing could mean accessing formers for wing dowel holes becomes difficult. Don't assume that the position of various holes in formers on plans will be right for your motor/servo/snake/pushrod etc. Lay your rc installation out on the plan and work out where those holes etc need to be for YOUR equipment. Take breaks. Stand back. Take your time. You can easily get caught up in something and get too far before you realise you made a mistake earlier and find it difficult to undo. Making templates from card or paper is sometimes more accurate than following a plan for windshield patterns, decking sheeting patterns and so on. Some things, like stringer slots in formers, are better done from the model than from the plan. Use the plan as a guide, but ultimately, there can be mistakes, errors or variation which means that the right position to get a good fair stringer line (for example) is slightly different to the plan. If you find it hard to make a particular piece (for example cutting thick ply) then cut two from thinner ply and laminate them together with epoxy, rather than struggle to accurately cut the thicker material. Making sure that your model is straight and true is more important than sticking slavishly to a plan. If something looks off, check, especially if printing plans yourself or using very old (possibly distorted) plans. Plan your covering before you build. If you have projected seams over an unsupported area, a bit of thin scrap as a covering support can save a lot of headaches later on. Hope some of that helps somewhat! Cheers Matt

After deciding that my previous effort at "Amelia" didn't really pass muster, I've decided to build another. A few lessons from the first time round, a few inconsistencies and draughting errors on the plan (possibly age related distortion?) and a couple of weeks got me to this point. Lots of fiddling, sanding, fiddling, sanding etc to go, but looking ok I think.

Regardless of whether you stick with the engine you have or change it to another, it will always be worth exploring different props and matching them to the airframe. The effects can be quite dramatic and transformative. Well worth the cost imho. Too many people have decided a model "flies badly" and given up on it, when in fact, some tweaks to prop size, cg, control throws etc could totally transform it. Recommendations (prop size, cg, control throws and so on) are a starting point, not an end point. Fly, note, tweak, repeat. Standard practice in Free Flight and something I think we could apply much more in RC than we typically do.

Jon - do the Turnigy props run fast because of some advanced design, or are they just "optimistically pitched" as it were?

12x5, possibly 13x5, maybe even an APC 13X4W, the point being that a larger prop spinning at a reasonable rpm is better on this kind of model than a smaller one rotating faster. We need reasonable static thrust, we don't need huge pitch speed. With all the drag of the airframe, trying to go quicker isn't going to happen, but we can use a big, low pitch prop for reasonable acceleration and braking at the lower speed bracket it'll be flying in.

It is interesting that some "classic pattern" models, for instance, Terry Westrop's "Loaded Dice" use quite a lot of side thrust. I assume that in this case, it is there to try to keep some purity of line in vertical manoeuvres? Especially prior to the advent of rudder/throttle mixing etc.

There's a tendancy to assume that unless a model flies like an overpowered WOT4, takes off in 2 yards, climbs vertically out of sight and "hauls ass" then it is underpowered. There is absolutely no need to overpower a model like an SE5a, especially if you want it to fly like one. Pretty much every Flair Se5a I have seen or flown is happiest with a 52 size 4 stroke at most. Decent diameter, low pitch, wide bladed prop and you don't need a 1:1 power to weight ratio, that's what wings are for. Takeoffs can be longer than 10 yards, it's quite nice actually to fly scale and "on the wing", especially when there's a lot of wing area as with the SE.

That's a very good point to be fair, but I'm never particularly satisfied with my models, I can't seem to stop myself rushing the build even though I really enjoy the process and rushing inevitably causes c**kups!

I had a Selestra for a time, which was reasonably competent in a breeze if ballasted. Plans are on outerzone. Possibly a bit outdated today. http://outerzone.co.uk/plan_details.asp?ID=12334 I also had a Valenta Dragon F3b glider which was very good without needing too much ballast, so quite versatile. Moulded though, so may not suit you. http://www.valentamodel.cz/en/index.php/dragon-29-a65

That's a point GG, especially when it seems that particular servos become unavailable quite regularly to be replaced by a similar one that won't fit in the place you planned for it

On a similar topic, I was looking through an old "AA Book of the Car" from about 1970 and it was quite telling how many "jobs" were considered a normal part of owning a car, things that the modern car owner would never even contemplate doing.

Given the price of new servos now, it's hardly worth trying to buy second hand ones. Even if the seller is genuine, a friend, club mate, whatever, you don't necessarily know how old the servo is, how it was installed, whether crashed, bashed or left in an oily dusty drawer for 17 years. In moving servos around, I do wish that all the servo manufacturers would settle on a universal spline size/type/number, it would make things much simpler.

Model set up table has built in vertical posts to restrain the LE, then a bungee cord over the rear fuselage in fron of the fin to hold the tail down. Usually sufficient for smaller models. Very large/powerful models I would probably want to use a helper if I could, but my models are usually sub 60" and no more than 40 size or electric equivalent.

Well, not my finest covering job (so no zooming in please!) but I'll excuse myself as I've been off work with Covid for the last week. LS Special 02, in suitable livery, waiting for a pilot figure.

As much as I really do want to be able to support my local model shop, it can be a very frustrating experience to go in with a list of items and only find one or none of them. It is ultimately far more logical and efficient for me to find an online vendor who has everything I need in stock. That £5 p&p is not such a sting when a package of £50 of everything I need arrives at the door. We hear a lot about how we should support our local shops and of course it would be great to do so, but ultimately, spending petrol money to get to a shop which has nothing I need doesn't help either them or me, nor can I realistically afford to buy things I don't need just to put some cash in the till. Of course, I can ask for the shop to order things in, but ultimately, as much as "browsing the boards" is an absolute joy and chewing the fat with the staff is lovely, leaving empty handed feels awful, so I suspect that people just avoid it. Again, another nail in the coffin, especially for those (unlike me) for whom building is a means to an end, rather than an intrinsic part of the hobby, and a big driver in making the choice between ARTF and plan/scratch/kit.

I have to agree that you need to put a reasonable price on everything, so wood, covering, hardware etc, otherwise its a bit disingenuous, many people don't have any stocks of wood or hardware. My estimate for a similarly sized model would be: Wood = £120 Covering = £30 Undercarriage = £10 Linkages, hinges etc = £30 Glue = £10 So maybe £200 for the airframe alone, plus probably the same in motor, radio gear etc.

My biggest bug bear from a building perspective, and something that does make a substantive difference to the overall cost of a build is those "bits and bobs" which one tends to forget. Threaded rod, hinges, screws, horns, a single sheet of wood etc which are fairly cheap but come with a minimum shipping charge that is often double the item cost. Petrol prices now have a significant impact too, a round trip to my local model shop uses a gallon of unleaded at getting on for £10, which is doubly annoying if they don't have the right thing. I realise that there are a lot of forum users with apparently inexhaustible wealth, but for those on a tight budget, these things have an impact on the choices made and for a lot of people, an rtf with everything in the box avoids those issues.

Perhaps I didn't explain very well. I meant as someone looking at soneone else's build, it would be nice to be able to "like" the entire build as a whole rather than liking (as in, pressing the like button) an individual post within that thread. It's a fairly trivial thought, so probably not worth expending much thought on!

For those longer build logs, would it be possible (feasible?) to have a means of liking an entire thread rather than individually liking each individual post. It might also be a useful resource if it were possible to download completed build logs (with op permissions of course) so that they could be viewed offline as a reference? Just thinking out loud

In terms of companies ceasing to trade, I think its true to say that we have lost many more than we have gained, certainly in the arena of kit manufacturers. That said, there were quite a lot of pretty ropey kits on the market back in the 70s, 80s and 90s, lots of clones of popular designs rushed out and sold for a few months, only to disappear again,so it wasn't all sunshine. But when you think of the quite big names which have vanished or stopped producing kits, it is quite telling. What we have now are a number of large producers of mostly rtf foamy stuff and a few niche manufacturers taking advantage of the availability of cnc cutting and 3D printing to produce short kits without needing large premises, jigs, moulds and machinery, as well as being able to market and talk to/engage/sell directly to the customer online. That is a great boon to the "cottage industry" who would previously have had to find and fund distributors, advertising, promotion etc to get products into model shops and adverts into magazines, so that's one positive change.

I recently bought enough balsa to build again two models which symbolised the golden age of modelling for me (perhaps 1985-1995?) and that was at least a 50% increase in price since my last similar order in 2020. I suspect that this may well be the last time. Spending upwards of £100 on a few sheets of wood to make an average sport model is becoming difficult to justify. I'm not a luddite particularly, but I get a good 50% of my enjoyment from this hobby from crafting something in wood and for all the advances in the hobby in recent years, my ability to enjoy the hobby is reducing and I can't really see myself becoming enthused about buying or flying nothing but mass produced rtfs. So I'll make my balsa models whilst I can, keep them intact as long as I can and be sure to wear my rose tinted flying specs and when they finally bite the dust and there's no more balsa to buy, no more covering to choose and no more wire to bend, I'll sit in my armchair with my old copies of Radio Modeller and RCM&E, drink tea from a tartan thermos, sniff my last sheet of balsa and lose myself in those halcyon days gone by.

I hadn't thought about it in that way Ron. Interesting. Maybe tapping a thread into the nylon mount would work, otherwise on some mounts, fitting a nut isn't very straightforward, at least to me, as the underside of the mount arms isn't flat. Perhaps I'm being dense.

Depending on the mount, I think self tappers are fine, especially into the glass filled nylon mounts with the wedge shaped arms. The only proviso is that I try not to remove said screws once they are in. If I need to adjust anything significantly, I'd rather spend a few quid on a new mount than risk redrilling etc. Always machine screws and tee nuts or nylocs for fixing the mount to the firewall however!

I had a ball with the last one. A duff rx caused its untimely demise sadly. A different colour scheme in mind for this one, something like this:

After the sad demise of my LS Special, I thought it was time for another. Such a quick build. I don't often repeat a build, but in this case, I felt drawn to it so here we are again!