Mike Etheridge 1

David, Thanks for the offer of the Rover but the cars I use are also somewhat old but in good condition and both passed MOT's without any work necessary. One is a 1988 MK2 Polo Ranger that my wife bought new and this has been valued at £1200 by Car Wow. My other car that I paid £20K for in 2006 is a Jaguar X TYPE estate XE that is ideal for transporting model planes is only worth under £1K despite only covering 7200 miles. Therefore the Rover value is beyond that of both my cars. I thought I could avoid the ULEZ cameras but there is one at the top of our road plus three others that would catch me on my way to Bartons Point MAC in Sheerness and I assume plenty of other cameras on my route to Epsom Downs. So far my ULEZ fines have exceeded £100 and I am sure there will be more. I also got fined £100 for doing 34 MPH on a restricted stretch of the A303 last summer where the speed limit had been dropped to 30MPH near the Royal Navy aircraft museum.

A good effort David. I have carried out similar repairs to a Super Air I was given and also a club member's Challenger plane. At present I have not got a car that is ULEZ compliant so I have dropped the hobby for now. What do I do with all my planes?

Last week three double rotor helicopters flew over in line towards Biggin Hill. Also a falcon which may have been a Kite ?

It looks good David, I look forward to a flying report. I don't think i have built twenty RC models but I certainly have repaired other's basket cases and somehow I must have over 30 models in the loft. That includes a Middle Phase 2 that has yet to fly.

My first Futaba 35MHZ radio system only had electronic facilities to number model planes from 1 to 6 without any naming . Hence some of my old planes have numbers on the fins.

I took my ancient Twinstar 2 to Epsom Downs to fly a few weeks back as part of the celebration of 100 years of model flying. It was raining so there was an urgency to get the planes off the ground so I did not make the full checks that I would do normally such as a range check. Inside the cockpit of the plane I had marked the location of the front of the very heavy NIMH flight battery, but the mark had disappeared so the battery finished up slightly too far back. The plane was launched and it was immediately obvious it was stalling so I put in a bit of down elevator trim and I managed a rather slow flight and a reasonable landing. Following this trip I returned to the Downs on 'Cloud tramp' day with the Twinstar and had enough time for a flight or two. I remembered the battery issue and fitted the battery further forward. I remembered also the elevator adjustment i had made and then managed to forget it prior to the plane's launch. The result was a bloody awful initial flight with the plane diving and almost out of control but with the help of Roger M who operated the elevator and aileron trims whilst I moved the sticks the plane survived and flew normally. This illustrated to me how complacency and lack of checks can affect a model plane even one as simple as the Twinstar 2 that I have flown for 16 years.

Anyone that remembers Mactuators and Sidewinders must be having senior moments by now Patmac.

Patmac I used a Macgregor 'Terrytone' receiver in the JNR60 and it only needed an Eveready 1289 battery to power both the receiver and the Mactuator. The 1289 battery delivered 6 volts to the receiver and the receiver fed the Mactuator.

Here is the Rip Max 'Mactuator' (Model Aircraft Actuator) advertisement from the june 1962 Aeromodeller:

A Mactuator (I still have one somewhere) was used to operate the rudder movement on single channel model planes. It was wired to the receiver and consisted of an electro magnet which closed with each press of the transmitter button. It also had a 4 pronged wheel that would turn a quarter of a revolution with each button press, so the rudder would move full right and then neutral and then full left and then neutral. It was rubber powered so you needed a device to wind up the rubber, I used an Elmic Side winder. I employed this arrangement on my 1962/3 built Junior 60 which still exists. The Mactuator was fixed to a ply bulkhead about 8 inches from the rudder and a piano wire shaft was fixed to the Mactuator and extended through the back of the fuselage and cranked to link on to the rudder. The Sidewinder was mounted near the front of the plane. A drawing would make more sense I think ?.I was hopeless flying the JNR 60 with the Mactuator and eventually installed a Sanwa 'Mini Two' proportional radio some 10 years later. The JNR 60 now has 2.4GHZ radio.

A better picture is attached. The cover picture is described as follows: 'Gaynor Holden a charming assistant for Alan Whittaker and his AM25 powered ''Guidato'' made from A.P.S RC/677 (9 shillings including post)!) and fitted with a Hill receiver plus Mactuator. Seen at the 1960 Woodford Rally sponsored by the Stockport Advertiser'.

I remember the Guidato, it was shown on the front of an Aeromodeller magazine between 1961 and 1963. I do have the magazine and will scan the cover but I am currently having problems on the website.

My 1962 KK New Junior 60 still flies on 2.4ghz as does my 1970's Easy Rider. Also from the 70's is my Flair Heron plus others that rarely see the light of day. My Uproar built by Chris Olsen in the late 90's/early 2000's has been borrowed by the BMFA for their 100 year celebration

A superb plane Bas and a joy to fly. Due to it's size it got a lot of attention at the flying field. It's a shame the Merco 49 (As new condition and once owned by Chris Olsen) kept cutting out, but I was fortunate that none of the dead stick landings resulted in any damage.

Basil, my Falcon is still collecting dust in my loft and I still have the option of fitting a 4 stroke motor in place of the Merco 49 . I think it's over 10 years since it flew after I had carried out minimal repairs to the wing plus rodent damage repairs to the fuselage. The plane is covered with orange nylon which could do with replacement on the fuselage

I do have Chris Olsen's plans including the original Uproar and revised modernised version. I can have them printed at my local shop. The other flyer other than Harry Brooks was Frank Van Den Burg (spelling?) with his Sky Dancer which performed well but piled in right next to me. It was repaired over night by Frank I think?

As it is now 60 years since the England team won the World RC stunt championship at Kenley aerodrome. How about making Chris Olsen's 'Uproar' one of the winning planes ?. This would be easy for me as I have the last Uproar he built. It has been in my loft with other unfinished planes Chris did not complete but would need some work and perhaps some 2.4 radio ?. I have kept the Uproar in my loft till such times I thought as my flying improves so that I would not damage the plane. However due to lack of practice my flying is now worse, but that said I have not written off an RC plane to date!

The Enya 35 with replacement silencer installed in a Cougar is shown on the right. The other Cougar I had repaired for a club mate has a clapped out helicopter engine fitted. The original Enya silencers are insufficient to reduce the engine sound outputs to acceptable DB levels.

I have an Enya 35 fitted to a Cougar 2000. I am sure I obtained a silencer to replace the original from 'Just Engines'. I had similar noise output problems with Enya 45's and added secondary mufflers also from 'Just Engines'.

When I first covered my KK New Junior 60 in 1963, I used nylon which I glued to the balsa frames with balsa cement, and then stretched the nylon and hardened the balsa cement with an electric fire. I then clear doped the nylon which I also dried with an electric fire to avoid condensation blotches. I replaced the nylon in 1976 using the same procedure. I have recently recovered the fuselage and tail plane and fin with Oratex which was an easy task, but I am not sure how it's weight compares with nylon or anything else so I will be interested to know how the kite material works out.

Dave S, I assume this is where I reply? The junior 60 is in my loft with about 30 other planes waiting for the lockdown to finish. I have just had an E-mail from EDMAC to say that no decision can be made on flying on Epsom Downs until the end of March so like most of us I am stuck. In the past I have flown the Junior 60 at Epsom Downs first, Croydon Airport, High Wickham, South Norwood Sewage works Site with an Enya 19 fitted, Grantham with the radio switched off in the 'chuck and Duck' event, Bartons Point Sheerness, and the Medway Club Sheerness. I wish now I had left it in it's two channel configuration with just throttle and rudder. Having added the elevator the CG has moved back and more lead needs adding to the nose which already has half a pound of lead fitted. I will miss using the ED Racer and it would have been nice to use it in a veteran plane event. My nephew Nigel who has flown the plane in the past can't believe it still exists. He did borrow it once to fly at a show but flew it without adding balsa strip under the tail plane it needed without an elevator. He was most embarrassed as the plane did not gain height and the show's announcer asked him if he 'knew what he was doing' !

I had £10 to spend by Christmas 1962. Having had my own design 5ft span free flight model crash at Epsom Downs and then lose my Southern Dragon on it's first flight in September 1962, it was time to try radio control. So from Heset Model supplies in South Croydon I bought a New Junior 60 kit for 58 shillings and also obtained a Terrytone receiver kit for 5pounds 19shillings and six pence. I removed the ED Racer from the crashed plane as it appeared to be ideally suited to the Junior 60 and obtained a second hand transmitter from a Radio Ham Alan Litchfield. By the summer of 1963 the Junior 60 was ready for it's first flight and it free flighted beautifully on the Downs but with a left hand turn. The plan showed a trim tab on the sub-fin on the plane so I put a right turn adjustment on it. On its next flight the plane flew in fast ever decreasing right hand circles with the right wing eventually hitting the ground and the plane's nose breaking away. At no time had I switched the radio on. After a repair the plane flew very well with the radio on but I needed assistance with the flying as I got totally muddled with the transmitter. On a subsequent visit to the Downs I lost control of the plane and it flew over the Grandstand and was lost briefly. Someone had in fact hidden it in a bush and covered it with long grass. On my return to the Downs I discovered all my flying kit including camera had been stolen. The Junior 60 then spent the next 10 years in a shed but was eventually revived with new Sanwa Mini 2 proportional radio. I then got a lot of use out of it until radio interference caused it to pile in , however I did repair it and it has flown well ever since. I have added an elevator to it and refurbished the fuselage and substituted the ED Racer for an OS 30. It needs more weight in the nose as it stalled rather badly on it's last flight.

I have an A0 drawing board as a building board. In early 2000 we were obliged to get rid of our drawing boards at work, and use CAD instead. We then of course used up far less floor space, and I was able to take my drawing board home. I just wonder if there are any such boards on E-bay but I would suggest that drawing boards can warp? It looks like there are plenty of drawing boards available but only the older wooden boards would be of use and not those with a Melamine finish.  Edited By Mike Etheridge 1 on 27/01/2021 14:12:51

It worked OK for me but as I reported before my operator number that they said had expired I did not recognise, and once I had paid the £9 it showed the supposed expired number as my new operator number.---confused I was ?