Highlander

Actually Anthony, standard procedure in the event of tail rotor failure is. enter autorotation,! No torque, no need for the TR. I was at Hullavington in I think 68 when Niel pulled off that amazing approach and landing, he was an inspiration to everyone who flew but was finally beaten by a casa 111 in a rush to get home. What a waste. regards, James.

I am not sure where on earth you get that idea from Malcolm, there have been hundreds of successful autorotations in commercial service,( not practice ones) I myself have done two. The accident is certainly a tragedy but speculation should be on hold till the A.I.B put out their initial findings. James.

I have the Proxxon bandsaw as well as a couple of industrial ones and I find it an excellant piece of kit,albeit expensive. The main advantage being with a quick change of blade it will cut steel , aluminium and brass and leave a near perfect finish. James.

Hi, I have been looking for plans for the S3 for a while without success so have started drawing some up for a twin 70mm edf version for a winter build. Mine will be stand off scale as although the aircraft appears fairly simple it is very complex aerodynamically. If there is any interest I will post on here but it will be a very slooooow project, cheers, James.

Mars is at opposition in Leo just now, the two planets you observe are Jupiter and Venus. Venus reaches its greatest elongation on the 27 of March and the two planets you see are closer now than they will be until Venus occults Jupiter in 2065. (Jupiter is closer to the moon and Venus the brighter planet further out on the same diagonal) Cheers James

I tried to programme the parameters just for fun this morning but they defeated me. The full size uses differential collective and cyclic together for yaw control with collective reversed below 10% pitch and a curious dead band between 15% and 25% percent while the mechanical mixer changes direction. As your rotors are further apart than scale you may get away with just differential cyclic which would make it a bit easier and you would not have the roll coupling that comes with the differential collective. The design is very stable in the hover but has a tendency to try and pitch down during transition if one is a bit gash on the controls. Watching with interest, Cheers, James

A very good go at a difficult subject, though too wide too work in a scale fuselage. For yaw control you will need to set a 720 ( or similar) to work the cyclic channels of both heads an exact amount .             Best of luck, Cheers, James Edited By Highlander on 29/02/2012 22:50:58

Just when I thought I was getting a grip of this I am now totally muddled . 1/32 is .79mm so more flexible than 1mm . Is this what we want, a softer head with greater flapping range? Cheers, James.

Hi all, Tom, I am building the Mk1 which you kindly sent me the triplate and bearings for, but , I was wondering ,in order to keep as much weight forward as possible is there any aerodynamic or structural reason why I cannot mount the servos in the bottom of the box in front of the mast and have the control arms to the front of the head? Thanks, James.

Hi Ernie, Just because you cannot use a gas ring you need not be put off. I made my smallest forge out of a round 10 gallon drum which I lined with refractory bricks ,you make a hole near the base to attach an air blower pipe (approx 2" diameter) and put in about a 6" layer of coke which you sit your ceramic crucible on top of with your copper and brass fittings inside plus you need to add some borax to separate any slag.Mine will happily heat to just over 1200 degrees c. Casting and then machining your own home designs is a hugely rewarding hobby in its own right. best of luck, James.

Posted by Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator on 07/02/2012 16:50:23: Hi Brian,   no there are no compulsary tests - and certainly no exams! IN fact in R/C nothing - excepy having fun that is - is compulsary.   However, there are a few things that are desirable! Some of them very desirable indeed!   The first is insurance. Not a requirement under any sort of law but in the age of "Sue, Grabbit & Run" (that well know firm of compensation solicitors!) a highly recommended extra. INsurance is cheap. If you join a club it will be in the club fee. If you "go it alone" its available through BMFA just £31 per year for over £10m in cover. Gotta be worth it!       BEB, I was pretty sure that the previous goverment had made it compulsory to have insurance if you flew in a' public place or a place where the public might reasonably have access'would love to Know I am wrong, so heres hoping. JamesEdited By Highlander on 07/02/2012 17:26:23

I think that looks great Tim, a fully aerobatic twin, as Speedtwin claims, has a lot of potential for hooliganism. I do think though,that, with so many Courier fans out there it would have been fun to do an Envoy as an add-on to the Courier plan. The early Envoys had no flaps and keeping to the same scale 1/10 would have resulted in a very benign twin with a low wing loading of 62" wingspan and 41" length.Neville Shute and Tiltman used every bit of the Courier they could. I have a spare Courier wing and it took me less than 45 minutes to draw up all the different parts and download the 4 new ribs in profili( for each wing). It will be worth enlarging the tail feathers a tad and obviously the cockpit is different but only F1 and the two side pieces need altering on the plan (basically extending the taper by 6.5" from the new fusalage rib ) and perhaps making the aileron one extra bay wide due to the greater inertia but thats it. If you have no objections I would love to give it a go for myself.   James

Great work going on out there, I am afraid I am falling behind but I did some work on the tail. Tim has done a very accurate outline of Tilmans design but I felt it looked a little to ARTF'ish when I covered it . With this in mind I built a differant rudder with scale rib spacing and I am quite pleased with the result. It weighs just about the same as the original on the plan. As you can see I am building G-ACJL, this was the only scale colour scheme I thought would be visible easily on typical grey Scottish summer days. Cheers ,James.