Gordon Brown

I use one of those small butane powered soldering irons for this sort of job as a 40 Watt electric probably doesn't have the grunt to do the job very well and I also use traditional lead/tin solder, not the lead free stuff that needs a higher temperature. Flux cored lead/tin solder is available from Rapid Electronics and other mail order suppliers.

I have one that I bought from a car boot sale for £5 a couple of weeks ago. The reason it was so cheap is that this particular one had a well known problem with battery charging where it would not charge to full capacity, often not even reaching 10% charge and shutting down fairly quickly thereafter. The fix is to remove the back by ripping it off with your fingernails, remove the non-removeable battery by easing it off the self adhesive pads, and then disconnecting it from the motherboard. Reconnect the battery and reassemble, problem fixed but for how long no one knows. Not for the faint hearted if you've paid full price, but for a fiver I was prepared to risk it. It's quite a nice tablet and I carry it round in a big coat pocket, which I can't do with my Samsung. Good display, but an absolutely useless camera, worst I've ever seen on a tablet. Only runs Android KitKat, which might be an issue if you want to run more recent apps.

Due to an unexpected battery failure (four cell battery, on checking the bits found two cells at 71%, one at 50% and one at 13%) and high winds my Sebart Sukhoi 30e piled into the ground on Sunday. It's just about repairable but needed a new canopy, cowl and motor mount (the Sebart one has the side and down thrust built in) so I checked the Dumfries Model Flying site. Didn't show the cowl or canopy in yellow but gave them a call just in case. Extremely helpful, found the correct cowl and canopy were in stock (last ones I think) and said they'd post them that day by TNT. This was Tuesday lunchtime, they arrived Wednesday morning in a huge box, execptionally well packed. I hadn't discussed postage charges so was expecting them to be fairly high due to the box size, but no, only £8.99, which is very good. I'll use DMF again, suggest anyone who wants Sebart stuff does so too!

I've got one of these, looks suitable, any views? As ChrisB says, this may be a brave or foolhardy choice but as is the nature of these things the model came up at a swapmeet for an extremely good price (£70 complete with servos and retracts, never completely built) and I couldn't resist it. I've installed split flaps to try to slow the landings down and beefed up the retract mounts as well. Looks pretty good so far, but my heart stills gives a little flutter when I think of flying it. I'm a reasonably competent and experienced pilot, although I don't get dead sticks with the electric models I do practice dead stick landings with my 1.8m Monolog, simply because it's good pracice to do so. I've only seen one dead stick on an electric model, a balsa AcroWot where a magnet came loose in the motor can producing an interesting smoke trail as the motor wires burned out. The lad flying it did one of the best dead stick landings I've seen, bringing it down from an upwind position at relatively low altitude by dropping the nose and doing a fast low level turn spot on to the landing strip. Hope I don't have to emulate him!

Not sure if this is the right forum but hopefully I'll get some advice nontheless. I'm currently putting together a CMP Mitsubishi Zero powered by an ASP FS120, which is the first ic model that I've built and I'm looking for some advice on the electronics side of things. I've built biggish all-electric models before and if it's using a big motor I'd use an opto esc plus a separate SBEC or UBEC and lipo battery to power the receiver and servos. However, most of the ic models I've seen at the club use a NIMH pack for rx and servo power, something I have no experience of. My inclination is to use something like a Turnigy 15A UBEC and a 3 cell lipo as the plane will have 6 Futaba 3003 servos installed running on 6V to give as much torque as possible. However, I'd like to power the UBEC using a NIMH pack as I want to put the battery as far forward as possible to minimise the additional balancing weight that will be necessary in this model, and I want to be able to charge it in the model. Can anyone advise if this is a reasonable approach? Is there a better alternative that is of a comparable cost?

Andy, thank you for the comprehensive reply, pity the Legend Productions model is too small as it is probably the best japanese pilot bust out there. It's entirely possible that I will open out the cockpit and do a proper scale detail job on it, lots of info out there to help me, but for the moment I just want to make it look reasonable until I've done the maiden flight. To be honest, this model is scaring the pants off me as I get closer to finishing it as it's the first ic model I've built and will be the first I've flown, although I have several years experience with fairly large electric models. I bought the airframe from a swap meet as it was going at a bargain price, with the intention of doing an electric conversion. However, the nose moment is so short that it's tricky to do an electric version and the challenge of an ic build was irresistable. I'm hoping I don't have to put too much lead in the nose (4 pounds is not unheard of on this model!) as it will make landing inetresting to say the least!

Just heard back from Pete of Pete's Pilots regarding whether or not he still does that rather nice Japanese pilot, short answer from him, "no, sorry" which is a ruddy shame as it's probably the best looking one.

No, you were right the first time, it's the one below from Pete's Pilots, found an archived listing with it on. However, he isn't listing this one on Ebay, I'll send him a message asking if he still does them. He does another one but it isn't as nice a model as the one below. Real Model Pilots don't do the bust any more, just the head, and the full body is much more than I'd want to pay. There is another one on ebay made of latex but the quality of the model doesn't look very good. Edited By Gordon Brown on 16/03/2017 14:01:57

I'm continuing my CMPRO Mitsubishi Zero 120 build and I'm looking for a suitable pilot figure to add a touch of realism. Some time ago I spotted a latex moulded figure of quite good quality and low cost (about a tenner as I recall), one with a fur lined helmet with big flaps, but stupidly forgot to bookmark the page and I cannot for the life of me find it any more. The figure needs to be between 1/6 and 1/7 scale as the model appears to be 1/6.6, anyone recognise it from the description or have a suitable model surplus to requirements? Gordon

Haven't progressed very far with mine I'm afraid, other committments, other models all took precedence and I haven't flown as much since my lad left to join the army as he was one of the main drivers of the hobby. I have fitted split flaps and diddled about with mounting the tank etc, hit a minor issue with the ASP 120fs exhaust as the angle it's at means that I'd have to hack a huge hole in the cowl to allow it to exit. I've put together a design for a better exhaust manifold that I will knock up on the lathe when I get time. I've just finished building my Rojair ME163 so there's space to get on with the Zero, or the FW190 that needs repair, or the half built Stuka, or the Polecat kit, or the half built Swordfish I couldn't resist buying, or that rather nice big Citabria...

Posted by KiwiKid on 26/02/2017 06:34:20: Unsure of the kit origin (no plans!) - fuse is about 1m long so w/s should be around 1.3m. Have a look at Sunshine Modelbau (Germany) especially this page, looks similar to yours. https://www.sunshine-modellbau.de/sunshine-flugmodelle/militaermodelle/me-163-b-1a/modell-me-163-b-1a/1. If the fuselage length is around 1m you are likey to have a wingspan of around 1.55m, which is pretty big for this model and will be about 1:6 scale.

The Rojair Komet is 42 inch wingspan, it's not the same as yours as mine is not a composite but is blow moulded polyethylene and the fuselage was split horizontally. No rudder on mine either, I understand that due to the very short tail moment the rudder is ineffective in any case. Having said that I'm considering separating the rudder from the moulding and making it active as I miss it for landings. Any idea who made yours? Could be an early Jim Fox version which I think are about 36 inch wingspan.

After a number of false starts and duff motor, esc and prop combinations I have finally finished the 1970s Rojair ME163 kit I bought ages ago. The photo shows it before I gave it a matt finishing coat, which has improved the appearance significantly, and there's no prop installed. Flying it is "interesting" as in crap my pants interesting, as it does around 80mph in level flight, is as twitchy as blazes even with small throws, heaps of expo and a slightly forward cg, and climbs like a homesick angel. Needs a reasonably good chuck to get going but accelerates rapidly once it gains a bit of lift. It is also surprisingly difficult to see head on, which lead to an early flight landing in a ploughed field. One of the club members who flies pylon racer type planes had a go and really showed what it was capable of, he reckons it's a high performance pussycat that ignores the wind, which bodes well for me once I get used to it. It has a Turnigy NTM 3536 1800kv motor running on a 4S 3000mAh battery, turning a 9x4 APCe prop, gives a thrust to weight ratio of about 1.7:1 and around 250 watts per pound with an all up weight of 3 pounds. After 5 minutes relatively gentle flying with a bit of insane vertical I still had 50% battery capacity left, so should be nice to fly once I get the setup tweaked and my heart slows down a bit. Edited By Gordon Brown on 25/02/2017 20:11:27 Edited By Gordon Brown on 25/02/2017 20:12:31