Prop Nut

I'm sorry to read about some peoples' bad experiences with clubs. I may just be lucky, but my local club could not have been more welcoming to me, as a 50 year-old novice and newcomer. Twelve years on, there is still a strong training scheme and everyone is encouraged to pass the A Cert. I, too, have heard the term 'cliquey', but this is often no more than a group of members with an interest in a particular branch of the hobby, or longer-term members who have years of shared experience. As a regular soldier, I experienced the difficulty of breaking into a new unit, where the old sweats stuck together and were wary of newcomers. The answer seemed to be to keep your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open, and stick with it until they realised you were going to be a valid member of the unit, when they would quite literally be prepared to lay down their life for you, and you for them. Good advice in most situations, I think. It is possible to learn to fly as a loner, but the difficulties and risks are much greater than having all the accumulated knowledge of club members and instructors to draw on.

I endorse much of what has already been said. Crafty ComputerPaper waterslide and dry application decal paper is superb and they are very helpful if you ring for advice. I search the internet for suitable images to download and have been able to produce some very good ones using the PC and inkjet printer. I like to remove the foreign aircraft registration numbers on ARTFs and replace them with British, but use one of the online suppliers to do this - service and cost are very good, in my experience.

Thanks, Jim. I'll do as you suggest.

I have often seen kit instructions and magazine articles showing the right-angle set-up of tailplane and vertical fin using a simple plastic set-square with a small section of the 90 degree angle cut away, to allow clearance for the fuselage. At the risk of appearing obtuse (pun intended), is it possible to buy such a square, in which case what is its correct name, and where can I get one, or is it just a matter of cutting a standard one to do the job? I've trawled the net without luck, so any clarification will be gratefully received.

I know this is a little off-topic, but I fitted a Spektrum 2.4 Ghz module to my JR PCM 9xII, removing the 35 Mhz aerial, as instructed. Does anyone have a neat-looking fix to cover the hole left by removal of the aerial, please?

Although it's a little off-topic, one of the reasons I started to use online suppliers was the rather unbusinesslike attitudes of some retailers, which this thread alludes to. Perhaps I was unlucky, but of the three model shops within a 20 minute drive of my home, one was run by a young man and his father who were interested only in building model cars and seemed irritated when a mere customer interrupted them (they went out of business - unsurprisingly); another was owned by a man who considered himself all-knowing about model flying and would keep you waiting 20 minutes while he held sway with his impressionable cronies; the other is well-known for selling online and treats shop customers as a damned nuisance. I believe model flying is supposed to be an enjoyable hobby, not a battleground, and now prefer to communicate with a computer, which won't sigh at me, or try to impress me with irrelevant knowledge, or try to sell me something I don't want. The price for this is P&P, but I was soon able to identify the slow, the inefficient and the rip-off merchants, like the one mentioned here, and now use a small number of online retailers whose prices and service, with P&P added, are better than any I can find locally and are always willing to give advice by phone or email. It is probably no coincidence that these same suppliers also charge the least P&P.

Horses for courses - how many full-size Cessna 182s do you see in transit or beating up the airfield at low level? Spitfires flew as high as they could for 90% of the time, if they wanted to survive, so it's hardly scale to spend 80% of the time on the deck, unless your's is a low-level strike version, of course. Even then, they kept well above flak danger height until they had to attack the target. The Spitfire is really impressive on a low level pass, but it ain't scale to stay there all the time.

This is something that I have always thought, Flanker, but never had the nerve to say publicly, as so many of my clubmates choose to fit these ridiculous figures in their models. When a full-size Cessna 182 flies over me at 1,200 feet, I can't see the pilot. When my 1/6th scale Cessna 182 flies at 200 feet, I still couldn't see a pilot, so why bother? Fair enough for those who want to fit pilots, if it makes them feel happy, but don't tell me they make a model look better or more realistic, because they don't.

I didn't start RC flying until six years ago, at the age of 52, and was lucky to have the Tiger Trainer 40 recommended by my local model shop. The flat-bottomed wing makes it very stable and forgiving and it flies well at all speeds on an OS46LA, plus it looks more like a full-size aeroplane than many trainers. Unfortunately, through 'finger trouble', I crashed my first one, but now have three and enjoy flying them more than ever. I'll never be a hot-shot pilot, but I enjoy flying as near scale as I can. The firewall is normally strengthened with tri-angular balsa fillets, so it looks like you had a 'Friday' model. All four of mine were well built, with no poor glue joints.