Jon H

Thats nice Tim. I dont bother with gear doors on tail wheels normally as they tend to be more trouble than they are worth.

you would know all about that.

The problem is that every modeller thinks they are an expert to the point that when a real one shows up they would rather die than loose face and admit they were wrong. You can provide information to them all day long but they just wont listen. As an example, some comments are a direct pop at me from those too much of an old dog to learn any new tricks and consider themselves experts like most long term modellers. They still maintain that 100+ year old lubricants are suitable for modern engines and resists any and all efforts to educate them. The fact that i know more about the subject matter than they do is not important to them. The fact that my comments on oils and lubrication are based on detailed conversations i have had with chemists who understand this stuff is also not important to them. The fact that i have technical training informing my comments is also not important to them, and my 13 years working for an engine manufacturer is also not important. DO i know everything and have all the answers? no of course not thats impossible. but i do have knowledge and experience that is significantly greater than more or less everyone else on here and i am not going to pretend that is not the case. If you ask anyone who has worked in the modelling industry about modellers and their attitude you will get the same answer as above. This is why you dont see expert/manufacturer input as its just a waste of time. Most do not want to learn and those who do are stuck between a wall of bad advice and one actual expert being often the one voice of opposition. Simply put, its not worth the effort. I regularly had calls from laser customers arguing that the fuel i designed (with assistance) and recommended in instructions i wrote, for the engine i designed, that i built and tested..was wrong. The fuel was wrong, the oil was wrong, the run in procedure...all wrong. And these people were arrogant/stupid enough to call the manufacturer of the product to tell them they were wrong and didnt know what they were talking about. Now i know there is some hypocricy in that statement as i have called out other engine manufacturers instructions as 'wrong', but that is because i know why they are written that way and provided other conditions are met can offer a better alternative. I used to try and be diplomatic when dealing with comments on here, i now dont care and will gladly call a spade a spade.

My brothers and i are considering writing a complaint to the ombudsman after EE took complete advantage of my dad. Since my mum passed away at the end of 2022 my dad has really struggled and combined with his years and always being a bit of a sucker for a salesman they stitched him up with this insane package that was going to cost him £90 a month. It included netflix subscriptions (he dosent even know what netflix is), some massive media package for sports etc (he hates football...) and a whole bunch of other useless crap he didnt need. We had given him the exact name of the plan he needed, but the sales person just kept upselling him with 'oh this is our best package blah blah' and extoling the advanced features...none of which he understands or will ever use. My brothers and i could see it coming and kept badgering him to cancel it before it was even installed but he was convinced he knew what he was doing. To cut a very long story short EE just went out of their way to resist his efforts to cancel it all. When i moved they tried the same thing on me and despite me saying 'im not paying more than £40' the guy kept giving me packages way more than that. It was only after 15 minutes of this that i essentially said 'you dont seem to be listening to me as i wont pay more than £40 and you keep giving me more expensive packages. just cancel the whole lot and i will go elsewhere'. Magically a £39.99 package became available, what are the odds?

That ruins the fun!

yea the filler/non return valve is the silver thing in the side of the fuselage. looks like the YT rubber pad style as ron says

you have nothing but fixed ideas paul. The guy says in the first paragraph he is not a qualified lubrication engineer so you need to go and learn to read. no im tired of being mr nice guy. Castor is dead and anyone who says anything else is brain dead.

nicely cherry picked article paul. Its just another echo chamber piece promoting all of the usual nonsense.

Thrash it to within an inch of its life...and then another 5/8 😉 If the engine you are approaching has been run before then run in procedure and all that is meaningless waffle. Its been run, rightly or wrongly, so that ship has sailed. just get on with it while trying to refrain from being....'that guy'

In fairness, we dont have the balance sheet so cannot make a judgement. I would imagine shuttleworth would incur costs, be that extra staff/over time, perhaps some sort of insurance for the event, whatever. You can then balance those costs against the number of bacon sarnies sold at the cafe, the loss of income from closing the runway, the potential revenue from hosting another event on the same date which may be more profitable...etc. Beyond that, we do not know the state of finances at shuttleworth. If they are looking at their balance sheet and its just about in the black then swapping a non profit generating event for a very profitable one is a no brainer. Clearly i am theorising here, but the conspiracy theory chat is irritating as its far more likely there is a simple profitability study going on and the decline of model shows is mostly due them not making any money.

normally the fill valve is the non return. some are like car/bike tyres and some are...cheaper. My YT retracts use a simple rubber pad with a spring behind it which works fine until the pad gets contaminated with dust. The pad can also not sit nicely on the spring so it leaks. I fitted a washer between spring and pad to help locate it better, and clean them when the first sign of leaks ae detected. When it comes to retracts dont loose your mind making it air tight for weeks on end. I know some guys drive themselves mad expecting it to hold pressure for a month and still give them 15 cycles. Realistically it only needs to hold pressure long enough for you to run out of fuel/electrons and still get the gear down.

depending on the version the irvine might have has liner rot. OS made irvine engines for a while and they were not as good as the native examples. Still, if you had a native one that was giving you grief my first port of call would be the carb as the barrel screws could wear over time giving inconsistent mixture. Laser used the same carb for a while and it was a common problem once engines accumulated a lot of hours.

12x5 should be a similar load to 11x6 but give more thrust and less speed

11300 is quick, i am sure you could easily swing 12x5 or 12x6 if you need to tame the beast

but we were discussing the DVII and the flair example is about 60 inch as it was part of the scout series along with the puppeteer. The DR1 was 1/4 scale so a different kettle of fish.

or tear its wings off. My flair DVII flew on a 52fs and was more than adequately powered. The 80 would certainly fly a 70 inch biplane and they were used all the time in the 76 inch f2b. If you had a 100 it wouldnt hurt, but i would try the 80 first and then upgrade later if you have to.

Not had a VQ in a while but a few years back a friend and i decided that VQ stood for Variable Quality as some were much better than others! My general takeaway is they fly well, but are generally a bit heavy due to their pre printed covering. The covering is difficult to repair/maintain as well and not easy to deal with should fuel get under the seams. Admittedly all of my experience with them is their 60 size WWII fighter range so maybe not quite as applicable to the fokker as it would easily absorb some added weight when a Spitfire might throw a tantrum. The VQ promotional video does an excellent job of making me not want to buy one due to the fact that it was apparently powered by an oversize wasp in a jam jar (didnt see that on the powerplant specs?), but if i mute the noise....yea, got 3 wings...triplane. Not much more to say. It seems to do triplane like things. Seems to fly fast but that might just be the pilot not using enough raid on the powerplant. Still. For around £400 its likely hard to beat and i would be interested to see one with a nicer engine.

I take it they dont have sarcasm in France eh? In any case, i have a day off booked for Friday as the road i need to get to work is going to be closed. Glad i now have your permission though. As for the rest...no. Im good at what i do. i have seen what some consider to be engine running 'perfectly' and there is a chasm in between what i see and what i know so i will continue to try and pass on what i know. With luck, i will see/hear far fewer engines that sound like they are on life support.

or you have lower standards than the rest of us. Just spinning and making a noise isnt good enough you know 😛

The laser twins were not fond of a fuel T/Y as one carb would try and steal fuel from the other as it was easier than drawing from the tank. The FT series on the other hand didnt care, i suspect due to a different overlap in the opening of the valves on the different cylinders. Strangely though, your 100T is very similar in design to the FT series lasers (common crank pin) so im a little surprised it cares, but i have no idea what timing saito use and that has an air bleed carb if i recall so it will be more sensitive to fuel flow in any case.

Not the Gnat Didnt catch the reference from the picture, but the winnner is...The F4 Phantom.

Sorry Don no dice. You are on the right track though. Widely used with multiple air forces, long service life....

I have no on board glow on mine and it has never dropped a pot on me. I am running it as lean as possible on the slow run, and one pot is still rich (gimme twin carbs any day!) but it keeps going as long as i dont do dimwitted things like firewall the throttle from complete idle on a go around. My engine does have twin ring pistons stolen from laser 75's and compression is....there..as long as you dont look too hard.

Nope and nope. If it helps, its a 2 seater which has aided its advancement up the list.

Starfighter is a popular guess and they did drop like flies, but its been out scored by another aircraft. And its a conventional job, no fancy VTOL capability. They arent allowed to shoot staff members out of planes any more (phew!) and dummy's dont count on the scoreboard 😛