andyh

ignore me, I evidently can't read. 😞

I see that there is a "Family Partner" membership, which I'm not sure there was previously - I think it was always "Family Senior" in the past. it's also rather cheaper (£29) than the Family Senior last year (£40). does anyone know if this means that there needs to be a full Senior member in each family membership and then any additional adult would be a Family Partner, or whether all Family adults can be Family Partners?

I obviously buck the trend as I lower both the average age & the tone. 😉

2.4GHz is full of signal from communications equipment too, not least WiFi.

many thanks gents, much appreciated. 👍 I was thrown slightly by Johns Tee & Lee replying with different answers. 😄 I have a personal account with Lloyds so I shall investigate them first - when I took over as Treasurer with the current bank (HSBC) we had months of grief getting me authorised on the account. 😠

the bank that my club uses, which was previously free, has recently started charging us £5/month for the privilege, which may not sound much for most organisations, but for us it's a couple of members' subs per year going on bank charges. 😞 banks seem to have rather cut back on fee-free accounts for clubs/non-profits over the last few years - does anyone have any suggestions of who still does them? ideally one where everything can be done online - including paying in luddite members' cheques. 😉 many thanks

HK do a flattish 4S 2650mAh which fits the Riot battery bay quite nicely & is a popular combination in my club along with the 11x55.5 prop that is now supplied with the model.

that replacement motor has 25% higher Kv (1070 vs 850) than the original so it's going to draw more current all else being equal (ie if you're using the same prop). the alternative would be to prop it down a bit - eg 11x6 on 3S (but check it with a power meter). if you're looking for more performance, I would highly recommend 4S - I'm running mine on the original motor & ESC (40A) with the supplied* 11x5.5 prop & it will climb vertically out of sight. * the model was supplied with a 12x6 when it first came out which is fine for 3S, but I imagine Century had a lot of blown motors/ESCs when people tried it on 4S.

I have a couple of Aoyue soldering stations: Aoyue 936A - 60W - https://www.pcb-soldering.co.uk/aoyue-936a-60w-soldering-station - £64 Aoyue 936 - 35W - https://www.pcb-soldering.co.uk/aoyue-936-soldering-station - £42 they're temperature-controlled & have a wide range of swappable tips available. they do me nicely for quadcopter building & the 60W one does XT60's/XT90's with ease; the 35W one with slightly less ease. Weller or Hakko would be nice, but they're several times the price & I'm not sure what extra you get apart from the name.

I agree - the tailplane is effectively at -ve AoA due to downwash.

I suspect it's a convenient excuse for failure of the non-electronic speed controller - ie the pilot. to be fair, failure of an ESC/motor/prop causing one corner of your drone to lose lift is pretty catastrophic - somewhat akin to one wing of a plane falling off !

something like this would do you: https://www.banggood.com/Eachine-TX801-5_8G-72CH-0_01mW-5mW-25mW-50mW-100mW-200mW-400mW-600mW-Switched-AV-VTX-FPV-Transmitter-p-1147691.html?cur_warehouse=CN&rmmds=buy this video explains how to wire up a camera & VTx without a flight controller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46y8fhmvCyQ

I'm sure a keen modeller should have no trouble knocking up a guillotine in their shed. ?

haven't you got some building to be doing? I'm sure your team can lend you some sandpaper if you need some. ?

SBUS to 3x PWM adapter: you can connect multiple daisy-chained/Y-leaded, but you do need a widget to set the channel mappings: ie Rx channel x to decoder servo output y if you were so inclined you could probably make a split power/signal wiring harness, but if you needed that you would probably have the space for a few extra connectors. ?

had ours via Zoom last night using a Zoom "room" provided by the BMFA, the same as we did last year. it works very well for us - historically we have had very low turnouts for AGMs, but we get decent numbers doing it remotely.

I bought one of these a few years back when we were asked to drop the ashes of a late club member by his wife: https://hobbyking.com/en_us/h-king-candy-dropper.html?___store=en_us any kind of fine powder would have leaked out of the gaps, so I was going to rig up some sort of packet that would unfurl when the door opened & drop the ashes. in the end the family changed their mind & we didn't drop the ashes, but we had some fun dropping dry soil, pine cones, etc. ?

I would be astonished. whilst it's great that 200k camera drone users have registered, is that anywhere close - %age-wise - to the %age of BMFA (exc. BDF) members? don't get me wrong, I'm not anti- camera drone (I fly quads myself, as well as LoS/FPV FW), indeed I'm applauding the way the CAA is trying to raise awareness with the harder-to-reach consumer (vs. "enthusiast") flyers, but let's not conflate a high number with a high rate.

I suspect that "traditional" model aircraft flyers probably make up an overwhelming minority of UAS/drone users vs. the number of camera drone users. I also suspect that we also have a much higher CAA registration rate than camera drone users - this comment is not intended to be pejorative, just that the level of awareness of the requirements is likely much lower outside the BMFA/LMA/etc. club system. thus, since this isn't really aimed at us, then the CAA is probably targetting their awareness-raising activities in the right direction.

numerous times. I was plagued for a while with a particular FrSky firmware version in quads on the tiny R-XSR Rx - a failsafe is quite apparent on a quad when it disarms itself & falls out of the sky. it's quite noticeable when flying FPV with a horizontal Tx antenna that if you get too far to one side (even within legal FPV range) that since you don't follow the model with your head/body you can get quite end-on to the antenna & go out of range *much* sooner that you would otherwise. we went through a spate of failsafes at the club in certain parts of the field when buddy-box training a couple of robustly-built trainees until we twigged that they were obscuring line-of-sight for the RF. ? I almost always fly with telemetry & the Tx will audibly alert me when the RSSI is getting marginal, which is more often than you might think.

of course, with my models with a flight controller & a GPS I can have them return to "home" - the takeoff point, or some predefined coordinate - on failsafe, then either loiter until the battery runs out, attempt to land, or potentially have the radio link restore.

I generally use whatever the hands-off trim setting are for failsafe, but if you can set a small amount of rudder to make it circle without spiralling in, you might stand a better chance of getting the plane back if you lose radio! ?

I've slightly lost track of OpenTX on Taranises since I moved to a TX16S, but I think it's still quite possible to run the latest version of OpenTX with slightly older (ie ACCST 1.x) Rx's so long as you don't flash the Tx RF module to ACCST 2.x / ACCESS. that said, unless you need to upgrade for a particular bugfix or new hardware support I wouldn't bother personally.

I'd get the 5S 3.3Ah's just so they're the same weight as the 4S 4Ah's so you can use either without affecting the CofG.

not everything is subject to VAT - most food not served in restaurants being the obvious one - tipping is also exempt.