Alwyn Gee

Ouch, been there,done that with this model if not for the same reason. Maybe you suffered premature voltage drop due to cold weather and the LVC kicked in. alway best to close the throttle completely if power lost then near the end of a dead stick landing you may find the battery has recovered slightly to give you a short burst of power. That's always supposing nothing more serious has occured to stop the motor. Alwyn

Ross A point to keep in mind: If when you go through the bind sequence you obtain a solid light on the receiver that means the receiver is bound to the TX. If the throttle still does not work then you have to look for another reason for this. There is no point to keep trying to re-bind it. Only when you have got everything working properly and all your final adjustments made should you re-bind the receiver so that all the neutral positions of the control surfaces and the low throttle position are set to the failsafe.. Alwyn

Mmmm, the sun's shining and the wind is a little below gale force, seems a bit ominous, there must be a storm brewing somewhere or am I still asleep and dreaming. Oh well, I'll just have to complete the dream and get down to the field. Happy New Merry everyone.

There's also another possibility. I have found that sometimes you have to run the throttle trim down towards the low throttle for the ESC to recocnise the low throttle position. Then try opening and closing the throttle fully again.  As previously said, do this with prop removed then check for direction of rotation if this works Alwyn Edited By Alwyn Gee on 30/12/2012 23:44:34

A belated Merry Christmas to everyone. I've opened the prezzies, done the turkey and all the trimmings, had a drop of the amber nectre and I thought it was all over but I've got to go and do it all again tomorrow with another branch of the family. Lifes a beach. Alwyn Edited By Alwyn Gee on 25/12/2012 23:50:57 Edited By Alwyn Gee on 25/12/2012 23:51:37

Hi Ramon, welcome from sunny sopping Scotland. As BEB says, if you can spare some of your sunshine to send in this direction you'll be the most popular person on the forum.

FTB It might be worth a phone call to said supplier to see if they are prepared to put small items in the Royal Mail. I had a similar experience with some small spares from Switzerland which would have been prohibitive using the fixed postage charges quoted but an email exchange soon had the parts on their way using the normal postage service. I think most of these web sites are focused on delivering items that would normally have to go by courier. Worth a try. Alwyn

Hi folks Pyramid Models are selling this for £7.98 for a 50mm wide by 50m length roll. Hardly worth the hassle of importing it although it does seem to have taken a price hike since I last bought some in my LMS. Thankfully I've still got plenty left from what came with my SAS Wildthing and the extra roll I bought at the time which I'm sure was about half the price then. Inflation eh! it's all blown up out of all proportion. Alwyn

Hi Billy Welcome from South East Scotland. If you wait for calm weather You will never learn to fly. The right club, the right trainer and the right instructor will have you flying in just about any wind. If it's too strong for the field there's always plenty of hills for slope soaring. Enjoy your return to the hobby. Alwyn

As a totally electric flyer of approx. 4 years now and often not slow to have a jibe at some of the IC boys both at club level and on this forum, all totally tongue in cheek I might add, I would agree to some extent with BEB but would say that it is probably mostly not their fault. There are many more outlets to obtain these unsuitable models that are not in a position to offer any advice even if they wanted to but are only interested in selling "toys". Even some proper model shops are slow to point newcomers in the right direction rather than make an instant sale. I was fortunate to find this forum and do a lot of reading before making my decisions but despite this my first purchase was not perfect. The Foamy E-Flight Apprentice was a great trainer for anything upto a 10mph wind but more than that and I started to lose stick time. I then purchaed the Seagull E-Pioneer which is a blasa 40 sized trainer and well able to cope with anything an equivelent IC could handle. BEB makes the point that you have to have a supply of batteries to keep flying all day and that these are expensive but there are savings to be made in the cost of electric motors compared to equivelent IC engine so the difference in costs of initial set-up are not that great as might be thought. Another consideration is that batteries are getting cheaper whilst IC fuel is becomming more expensive. As others have said it's all down to choice and circumstances, I've spent my working life around IC engines both in airborn and landbased vehicles and had I had the blessing of a garage or other secure outdoor storage facility when I started this hobby I would like as not be flying IC now. As it is I have no regrets, except when those infernal noisy things are running up and I can't hear the sweet pure of my electric motor.

Hi I've just copied this post I made a couple of months ago but did not get any repies to:- Since this happened I discovered that SMC do a pack 10 pairs of Deans Ultra connectors  for £3.99 they are gold and have had no problems with them. Alwyn   Hi Just recently had to make up a lead to connect 2 x 3s packs in series for 6s. I usde the deans plugs that I had in my box but was one short. So off to the LHS to pick up some more. Only three packets of JP Accessories polarized connectors left so I took them. I only used the female half of the new connector as it's mate was already in place on the ESC. Went to plug this all together at the field and there was nothing! No power getting through to arm the ESC. Checked everything with my multimeter and all seemed fine. Still no power. Tried a single battery direct to ESC and bingo we have power. To cut a long story short the new JP plug is white metal on the female ends and will not pass the power to the gold pins on the ESC. When discussing this with clubmates it seems that others have had the same problem with the same plugs from the same LHS and one model was lost because they did get an initial contact but then lost it in flight. Has anyone else had any similar problems with these plugs or is it a bad batch. The strange thing is that the male side of these plugs appears to be at least gold coloured but the female side is not. Wont be using anything other than gold in the future. Alwyn Edited By Alwyn Gee on 25/10/2012 19:53:01

Pete Millar says "No substitute for low wing loading" and whilst not daring to dissagree with that there can be times when it is too low. I've had two ARTF models since I started this hobby 4 years ago that have benefitted from a few extra grams of wing loading. The first was an E-Flight Mentor originally intended to fly with a 3s battery pack and was a real floater to land in any sort of a breaze. It just did not want to sink and any attempt to flare for landing simply caused it to lift again. I decided to increase its power to 4s (reducing the prop size to keep the amps in check) simply to get more penetration on windy days. This totally transformed the model and it will now sink when the throttle is closed and you can flare it for landing. I've been finding a similar thing lately with the new R2F Venom and an accident to the undercarriage caused me to fit some steel penny washers to the main wheels, adding around 40g (just about on the CofG) and this too now lands much more realistically. Having said that, I can still make a sows ear out of a silk purse when it comes to landings. Alwyn

I believe since the problems experienced by myself and a fellow clubmate they have stopped charging VAT on deliveries to UK and now leave it up to UK customs to charge. It does mean though that you will also fall foul of the Parcel Force handling fee. Both of us were fully refunded by R2F, mine was via PayPal, not sure how my clubmate paid. I've since had a set of front nose wheel doors sent to me by ordinary post . Much cheaper than the standard parcel post which would not have been worth while for such small cost items. Email contact has been very good and helpful. I've had first class service from them. Alwyn

I never got to try mine as I Iost it in a mid air shortly after passing my brone certificate but given all its other excellent flying characteristics I would be amazed if it failed to recover from an induced spin from a reasonable altitude. I would almost expect it to right itself once the sticks are neutralised. I'm sure someone will be along shortly to confirm this. Alwyn

Ha Ha Just when you think you've sat on the riverbank all day for nothing you get two bites in a row. Sorry guys but it's pissisting down up here and I've got to find something to amuse myself. Alwyn

Nothing, until somebody turns this ruddy tap off!!!!!!!!! Alwyn Stir Crazy

I thought all you IC deciples loved all the noise and mess and here you are trying all sorts of wierd and wonderful ideas to get rid of some of it. Just take the bull by the horns and admit to the benefits you really want and rip out that noisy, smelly, oily thing and fit a beautifully clean, quiet, reliable electric motor. You know you want to!!!!!!!!!!! Alwyn

Can we be sure no trees were damaged in the making of this video!!!!!!!!! Alwyn

Apart from how to spell MUCH, that is.

Tha can allus tell a YORKSHIREMAN but tha cannot tell im MUTCH.

Hi Tim A bit off the original topic of this thread but you mention in the first post that you were playing with the throttle elevator mix to counteract the tendancy to push its nose down under power and as I said I was waiting to fly mine again after progrmming in the mix. Well I managed to fly it last Sunday and it was much better in the air with a few degrees of up elevator being introduced progressively after about 25% throttle and it certainly stopped the tendancy to balloon up on landing approach when the throttle was closed. It did still howerver want to float up again when trying to flare for touchdown and on my second attempt I managed to tip stall it about 3 feet above the ground and knocked off the wing tip tanks and damaged a wheel. The rim broke away from the hub and the tyre rolled on down the runway which is fortunately grass. Concious of my earlier thoughts of increasing the wing loading slightly I effected a repair to the wheel by glueing steel penny washers (which just happened to be the same diameter as the rims) onto the hubs. I did it to both sides of both wheels even tho' the other one was not damaged and this has added about 40 grams, more or less at the Cof G, and having flown it again yesterday it now seems much better to land. I can now fly it in a bit faster, keeping a little throttle on, and it will flare without starting to climb again, and allows it to sink onto the main wheels. Kill the throttle and the nose wheel settles nicely. Result!!!!!! It was almost flat calm yesterday and that may have helped but it felt like a different aeroplane. I was beginning to despair that I just could not handle this model but now I live in hope. Alwyn

Hmm......been flying for about 3 years now with spekky gear and never had a crash that was my fault. Edit: Been flying for about 3 years now with spekky gear and never had a crash that wasn't my fault ......Except the mid air head on that was the other guys fault cos he was using Futaba. Alwyn

Maybe you should look toward the good old US of A for inspiration, they've electrified a few gangsters in their time.

This is a 5lbs/2500g bird guys, I dont know where you're getting 3lbs from. Alwyn

Hi Tim As you may remember I have this model too and so does a fellow club member. I've not had a chance to fly mine again since doing the mix you are talking about with the throttle and elevator but one thing you should know is, that buried in all the spagetti in the fuselage under the canopy is a switch from the Ubec to the receiver and this was the suspected cause of the demise of my club-mates model. He thinks that it had become partly switched off at some point whilst either trying to get all the wiring pushed into the space below the battery tray or just by pulling the wiring around when fitting the battery or maybe even just because it can float about loose in the compartment. He cut the switch off his replacement airframe and just taped up the wires as it is an open circuit switch so you must not tape the wires together. Having been pre-warned about this I simply taped round the switch on my model so that it cannot move. It would be a lot better if the switch had been mounted in the model so that it was accessible from outside to isolate the receiver to prevent accidental operation of the throttle. Not such a big issue on an EDF i know but still useful. It would be worth making sure your switch is fully on and not able to be disturbed in flight. Alwyn