MattyB

Sounds like another own-goal for HK PR; I will personally wait for their official announcement that it is open before trying a test order I think! Not that surprising though, in the early days of any new (or reconstituted) operation fulfilment is always likely to be sub-optimal.

Reviving this long time dormant thread, we now have 5KW solar PV with a hybrid inverter and an 8KWh home battery installed, and it's awesome. Current payback estimates are around 7.5-8 years, and we are generating nearly 3x what we use for (approximately) 7-8 months a year, and should still cover our home usage for anhther 2 months, making us electricity independent for around 10 months per year. It did prove a little tricky to get the setup right initially, but it's now been running for nearly a year without any issues, and the solar performance is slightly better than the installers initial calculations. We've also moved onto the newish Octopus Flux tariff to get better export rates and some reduced import rates 0200-0500 each day which we can use to charge the battery in winter. As used EV prices have fallen back to more realistic levels recently I've also been looking at changing one of our cars (10 year old Passat estate and 13 year old Jazz) to use some of the spare generation. In the end as it was a big diesel that had generated a couple of nasty bills recently I decided t ochange the Passat for.... another Passat! This one is the petrol PHEV GTE variant though, and it's a lovely car to drive whilst not having the compromises of a pure EV on longer journeys. It seems to be working well with the Zappi (solar aware) home charger, and yesterday on a mixed run of ~45 miles it averaged ~110mpg, so it should be very economical to run. I did really want to go for a pure EV, but at the end of the day I couldn't make the numbers work - going this route means we can afford to replace the Jazz next year with a pure (150 mile range) EV for all our local and medium range trips (Leaf, e208, Zoe etc). That will cut our carbon emissions further, especially as it will help make the make the most of any excess solar we generate (having two cars with a battery will mean we pretty much always have one on the drive available to charge from any excess being generated). Once I've got the off peak charging and interaction with the home battery sorted (I don't want it to dump into the EV each time I charge it), I'm also going to investigate opening up our charger for use by local people by using Co Charger or a similar service. This will help pay back the upfront investment in the charger and hopefully means more people in the village will think about going for an EV or PHEV car. Interesting times!

Ah yes, I remember now, there was a previous conversation on here that the EASA format may not have been followed correctly in the UK in the end... TBH it sounds like the CAA made a bit of a horlicks of it when they re-issued the Op-IDs following Brexit...

In terms of influencing the stats for a given question then yes I agree. However, if every answer was a copy and paste of the BMFA response I'm sure the CAA would quickly spot that, and may even discount some of those responses if they thought automation was being used to skew the result (it's really simple to do these days).

Reflecting on this some more, I have just submitted my own response, and have decided to post it here for others to look in the hope it stimulates some more responses to the CAA request. I'm not doing this because I think you should agree with me - many will not - but that on reading the BMFA response I just didn't feel the fact it was written from the perspective of an organisation made it that easy to write a telling personal response that was aligned; by contrast this is in the first person. I also didn't feel the BMFA responses was specific enough to the type of flying I do (LOS fixed wing at club sites and public slope sites), or robust enough in its rejection of RID. Finally the fact it was in pdf format meant it could not be directly edited without conversion; this one is in docx which should work on most devices. Key point - Even if you are a LOS model aircraft pilot similar to myself, please do not reproduce this word for word; that just leads to our collective responses becoming less impactful. I'm only providing it in case it helps you to formulate your own response that reflects how these potential changes could impact your involvement in the sport. Example response - CAA Call for input Aug 23.docx

That’s fair enough, we are all entitled to our view, though whilst the CAA may understand a nuanced argument, I'm less confident of their lords and masters... 😉. The most important point is that people do submit their views, as a low response rate is the very worst situation for all of us - it tells the CAA and UK Gov that we don’t really care that much.

I agree model aircraft pilots don’t have to newer “Definitely no”, as there are clearly some use cases where RID makes sense. However I do feel quite strongly that going right down the middle as the BMFA suggest is playing into the regulators hands by convincing them the model aircraft community are ambivalent to RID, even if the text that accompanies that response is against RID for models.

Please watch the pieces of the video I suggested above. Do that and you will see the idea that we as modellers somehow brought this on ourselves through purchases of flight simulators and ARTFs from China is frankly a bit silly. The tech we are talking about here was being invented by the military and in other industries anyway. Enterprising individuals and orgs worldwide (including the likes of Google, Amazon, DHL etc) realised there were opportunities to use that for commercial BVLOS SUAS in entirely new use cases that could drive profit to commercial orgs and valuable tax $$$ and jobs for governments. Unfortunately, all those new use cases have been deemed to require additional legislation to control the low level airspace these SUAS will operate in. The rest of your post about the long term outlook I (sadly) do agree with, though given the resources available for enforcement I can see a future where model flying continues, but as a much more underground and opportunistic pastime than it is today.

Whilst much of your post I agree with, the highlighted section in bold is just plain incorrect IMO. Who are the "we" you talk of - traditional line of sight model aircraft pilots, newcomers to the hobby, or both? And how does an established modeller buying and using a flight sim or foamie model cause the authorities to take the decision to legislate? I suppose the advent of affordable multirotors and FPV may have contributed a small amount, but if you read things like the Riga declaration from 2015 and listen to those who have been in the thick of this for the last 10-15 years you will realise it is really about the desire to integrate BVLOS UAS into the airspace for commercial, governmental and and military use. If you still don't believe me watch this BMFA webinar, it explains a lot. In the first section Dave Phipps directly refers to the regs being focussed on enablement of the commercial drone industry (first 10-15 mins worth). At around 57:30 Cliff Whittaker explains how we ended up here; it is an excellent explanation of the factors that led to the current regs, including the commercial drivers that led the the EASA regs on which the eventual UK ones were based (this predates the formal declaration from the CAA of the desire to implement RID, but those of us who had read the docs and understood the Operator ID includes a checksum directly designed for use in RID transceivers knew that was coming ages ago):

...and here is the most up to date OpenTX manual there is online - it's not completely current to the latest version, but should answer 98% of questions... OpenTX v2.2 manual

Here is your post in that thread @Martin Dilly 1: PS - It's easy to see all your own activity within this forum, just click on your profile, then the: ...button and Bob's your mother's brother.

Telemetry receivers with signal strength info already fulfil that need for me - no need for RID!

There are a few problems for me here, one with the original question, the others with the BMFA response. Here is the question and the full BMFA guidance:: “14. Should CAA implement Remote ID (Opportunity 11) and why? A. Neither yes nor no Many drones being introduced onto the marked already incorporate the facility for Remote I.D. and this is probably appropriate due to the locations they can be operated from and the increased potential for security/privacy concerns due to them being equipped with cameras. Interrogation of the Remote I.D. should be limited to enforcement agencies and the BMFA would be opposed to the information being accessible by the general public. Existing/Legacy UAS under 250gm should be excluded from the Remote ID requirements and there should be a suitable transition period for existing/legacy UAS over 250gm before they must comply. However, the BMFA would be strongly opposed to any Remote ID requirements for model aircraft. Our members have a collective fleet of around 500,000 aircraft which are usually operated from fixed remote locations well away from areas likely to require Remote ID interrogation and within VLOS of the pilot (generally making it easy for them to be identified in the unlikely event of there being a requirement). The BMFA believes that Remote ID would be disproportionate and unnecessary imposition on the model flying community. The EU regulations do not mandate any Remote ID requirements for aircraft operated under an Article 16 Authorisation within the framework of model flying associations, or for model aircraft within the Open Category (A3, C4) and the BMFA requests that this position is maintained in any amendments made to the UK regulations.” Most of the response I am ok with, but there are some fairly significant issues I can see: This whole question is somewhat moot given earlier in the doc they confirm they are effectively obligated to bring legislation implementing RID. If that is the case, why are they asking for opinions? Probably just so they can implement whatever they have already decided having “formally consulted” the public 🙄 By answering “neither yes nor no” we will not make any statistical impact on the responses to that question (e.g we are just putting a large weighting on the middle “not particularly bothered” answer). Even though I agree there are RTF consumer craft that probably should have RID, I will certainly not be answering with the middle answer, as that statistically undermines the fact I believe RID is completely unnecessary and disproportionate for LOS model aircraft at this stage. Sure, if clouds of delivery and survey drones were to become widespread then perhaps electronic conspicuous could become a requirement we have to meet, but we all know that is not going to happen for at least a decade, maybe longer, maybe never. The last bit of the BMFA response is very focussed on protecting members operating under Article 16 specifically. I suppose this may play well with some of us, but personally I’d rather see them arguing that RID is unnecessary and disproportionate for ALL recreational model flyers at this stage, not just national association members. We have given up enough rights already, this is the time to actively point out that there is no evidence that BVLOS commercial drone services are ready to start operating at any kind of scale yet. There are also plenty of other air users in the 500ft band don’t have to have RID today, so why should model flyers?

Yep, definitely polyester - the smell gives it away straight away, even after 14 years! Definitely robust with a bit of flex to absorb those inevitable slope side high energy landings, but not th e most refined or detailed moulding - there are quite a few areas that will need some additional filling and finishing prior to painting.

Cool that you are trying the lam film mylars, great stuff. in breaking news, I was up in the loft on Friday and look what I found… Purchased in 2009!

No, you can absolutely use an output of another channel as an input to another mix line or logical switch - in this instance, you would just replace Thr with CH1 within the mix line that gives the blip. Short summary - If asking "Is it possible within OpenTX/EdgeTX/erSKYTX", the answer is always yes! 😄

No, Thr is just the throttle stick position - it’s an input, not an output. That particular logical switch will fire every time the throttle stick passes -81, irrelevant of whether the throttle cut is active.

I suspect you may be using a pretty old device/browser; all the devices I acces on send me straight to the first unread post on opening a thread. The first post/last post controls sit at the top and bottom of eac page, they look a bit like fast forward and rewind on an old skool VCR:

If you like the look then fair enough, but I suspect the anhedral is trying to solve a problem that won't exist... Put side by side with a DH3C for instance, there isn't that much difference in fuselage depth, and that aircraft has some slight positive dihedral. It also has a lot more vertical fin area...

Putting detailed address info (or even the town you live in)) on a public forum is not recommended for security reasons, so I don’t think it’s really fair to blame forum participants for this Can you not just contact local clubs in your area via email with a list of kit that you are looking to sell or give away? It may be more straightforward, as then everything would go via a local pickup.

What topic was it non? Can you in remember who posted it? Many don’t know but there is a very good advanced search feature within this site that allows Boolean searches, searches by user and time period, etc - give it a try… https://forums.modelflying.co.uk/index.php?/search/

Having looked at it a few times now I’m of the opinion the horizontal tail could be cut down a bit span wise, as it seems very generous. That in itself won’t save much, but if it means less m/no nose weight it may be worth doing.

Interesting. You have to wonder who (if anyone) is in charge of Comms and PR; you’d think they’d have announced the EU warehouse on their YT channel last week but nothing, but instead they went with a random fanboy “reviewer” channel. Now they appear to be opening up the UK again, but there are zero Comms on the site or their YT channel. How can anyone buy from them if this kind of basic info isn’t available?

Wow. That is pretty awful, and rather embarrassing, particularly the comment about "repairing" props. Bonkers!

OK fair enough. Based on that photo I doubt it will weigh anything like 4kg, so that is good, but we do have to give you a reality check - that will be no beginners model. If you do want to fly it yourself you are going to have to learn on a much simpler and more forgiving trainer first, and there is at least one and probably two more models needed between that and you being able to fly the Herc with confidence. Of course an alternative you could just get another experienced pilot to fly it for you. Sorry if that is a bit disappointing, but trust us that if you went out and tried to fly that as a complete beginner, it would not last long!