John Bunting

I still have a 1/72 solid scale model of the Mosquito, which I made in 1943 when I was 13, not long after it came into service. This programme inspired me to repair it, as a few bits came off years ago. The U/C does actually retract, but I'll have to make some new doors for it, as they are missing. Another thing they didn't mention in the programme was that the Mosquito was partly derived from the DH Comet racer of about 1935.

Ah well; memo to self; RTFM.Anyway, I thought most of you guys knew the Flight archive already! They have a request for anyone with stuff that's missing, e.g. pre-1909 issues, to get in touch with them. I see Tony B has issues back to 1905. Anyone know which year they started?

Try Here  JB

The ‘Flight’ archives, going back to 1909, are worth browsing for general interest or unusual types for scale modelling etc.They had a regular model page in the early days, and I was surprised to find a model using sheet and strip balsa published in May 1921. I always though balsa didn’t come into use in the UK until about 1930. Ever heard of an aircraft called the Jacuzzi? No kidding; it was a seven-seat monoplane made by Jacuzzi Bros., of Berkeley, California. See ‘Flight’, March 3rd 1921, p. 147. Whether they were also the makers of the other Jacuzzi, it didn’t say.

If, as Steve suggests, the circuit resistance has changed in some way, how about the ESC? It might have been interesting to monitor the full-throttle load voltage at the motor terminals, as well as at the battery itself.

Hi Erfolg; I've only just now seen this.I wonder if the internal resistance of the cells has gone up. That can happen with NiCad and NiMH cells, as they get older: I'm not sure about LiPos. For a 3s pack, the current would be only about 3 amps at your wattmeter reading of 28 to 34 watts. Did you check the cell voltages while on load?

Thanks, Tom and David, for your kind offers of help with FoilSim. No trouble finding and downloading it, but I'm new to zip files and I expect I'm doing something wrong in trying to unzip it. I'll consult a fellow club member, who will probably spot it immediately!

Has anyone here downloaded the NASA 'FoilSim' program that David mentioned in the May issue? I tried, but am new to Zip files, and must have done something silly, as I didn't get the necessary interactive part.

The Shuttleworth Collection has a Hind. Also see www.hawkerhind.co.uk, mainly about the Hinds recovered from Afghanistan some years ago.

Just reading Part 4, which arrived this morning, and am intrigued by the references to 'vortex shredding', in the photo captions. Now there's an idea: shred the vortices, and maybe you'll get the drag down a bit!

If you ever do the flat plate tests, David, I wonder if you'll get similar results to F W Schmitz. I think he got a funny boomerang-shaped lift curve, with a sudden decrease of slope at about α=5°, Cl=0.5.

Thanks, David: all most interesting. I hardly imagined that my guesswork would turn out to be so closely investigated in your experiments! Can you also tell us the chord and thickness of the test airfoil, and the tunnel flow speed(s)? It occurs to me that if the facilities are still available, one further case might be examined: a flat plate airfoil, which should be cheap to make.

David: Having asked about the lift of symmetrical airfoils, after Part 1, I've been looking forward to your comments on it in Part 3. The nub of the matter seems to lie in your words, "this wing wil 'flip' from significant down-force to significant lift as we pass through the zero singularity that it never manages to actually occupy!". This leads one to wonder just what the lift curve actually looks like, for these very small angles of attack. It seems to suggest that the slope of the curve may be larger there than it is for larger angles; or else that there may be a small hysteresis loop around zero, so the wing goes very slightly beyond the theoretical zero lift angle, before the up or down force 'flips' from one state to the other. I wonder if any wind-tunnel tests, or even mathematical modelling, show any such behaviour. Talking of maths in general, I read the 'Aeromodeller' from 1945 onwards, and the amount of maths then was frightening, compared to today. Most of it, unfortunately, based on full-size data, at much higher Reynolds numbers than for model flight. I remember covering sheets of paper with figures, to work out the angle of incidence for maximum L/D or power factor. But the one that really sticks in my mind was a series of articles, stuffed with equations, entitled "Counteracting the effects of engine failure in twin-engined model aircraft". Happy days!

In an odd way, I'm in a fortunate position here, as my wife's main hobby - keeping a horse for riding - costs more than my aeromodelling. So, keep an eye open for any non-essential expenditure of hers which is equal to or greater than your modelling costs. But of course the key word here is 'non-essential'. Her ideas about that may not be the same as yours.

My model storage solution, for what it's worth, when I had the house enlarged a bit, was to buy a pack of large pressed steel shelf brackets - cheap from Screwfix -  and  mount them on two verticals against the wall, suitably spaced. No shelves; just put your fuselages, wings etc. across the brackets. Stick strips of foam or cork on them, to discourage models from sliding off. For my typical model size, I got seven levels, from near-floor to ceiling.