John Robertson 3

Another "Lemon" fan! My pal has also removed the Rx from his stabilised plane, replaced it with a normal unit and had no problems moving on.

In the book compiled and edited by Dave Hughes, "Radio Control Soaring", published 1974, it is suggested that the optimum hook position can be determined by taking a line forward 30 degrees from the CG and placing the hook there, on the underside. In practice it would be difficult to determine the actual CG position, as that would probably be lower than the wing's lower surface (assuming a high wing aircraft) and inside the fuselage, but using the fuselage-side position this would get you pretty close to the mark. It's suggested that if the model weaves and less height is gained then the hook is too far forward and if the model is unstable the hook is too far back. I used to fly off bungees in the 1980s and used this suggested method of hook-placement and never had any problems. I still have that bungee (home-made reel and all) and this has made me think I might well try a launch or two for old times sake! What could go wrong?

Aldi - is the one with the brothers (in the past) and is split North and South. Globally, not with reference to the UK. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi Lidl - no connection, no brothers. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidl

Good stuff these lasers. I have an old Screwfix-sourced wall tile/kitchen fitting laser and use it to verify angles and squareness on my planes when setting them up originally. The tripod was pretty useless and eventually broke, so I sourced an adapter (for only a pound or so from Bangood) which allowed me to fit the laser head on an ordinary photographic tripod. My tripod is an old, very heavy, Manfrotto professional studio unit (£49 on Ebay) which gives an extremely stable platform from which to work, but is easy to adjust smoothly. In fact, it shows up how flexible wooden floors can be. as the laser lines move with even very slight movements across the surface of the room. I can now be sure my models are set up properly to begin with and it allows me to make a proper assessment of how good, or bad, my post-crash repairs actually are.

No on-line purchases available, in the UK, for Lidl. I HAVE used the Aldi system - very good it is, too.

I had thought about it, but a bit too big and powerful for me - I'm certain I could chop my fingers off. Sometimes my imagination gets the better of me.

To my surprise, whilst wandering in Lidl this morning to buy one of these: https://www.lidl.co.uk/en/Non-Food-Offers.htm?articleId=15055 (for hard skin, but which look good for modelling purposes) I came across 6, yes SIX, of the disc sanders. They were marked down from the original £30 to £24.99! Needless to say, I grabbed one, in spite of my wife being beside me. When they were in stock in February, I purchased one. A few days later I thought that having 2 would be a good idea, sitting side-by-side in the modelling shed. One could have a coarse grit, the other a fine grit. This would save me the hassle of swapping over the sticky-backed paper disks. Naturally, when I went back in to the store they were GONE. Blast . . . I had thought about a hook & loop system, but always held back and kept an eye on the Lidl website for a repeat offering, but without any joy. As far as I am aware, the disc sander re-stock has come out of the blue, so I am a very happy old man indeed. Next must-have.  A scroll saw. Edited By John Robertson 3 on 02/08/2018 13:22:32

David Davis - Yes, it is. I may well take you up on your offer! The old motorhome/hanger/clubhouse has been asking for another trip to France, as has Mrs. R, but with grandchild No3 on its way it may not be this year. As we simply cross the Channel and look at the weather forecasts, most of our wanderings are pretty unscripted and we really like to use Camping Municipals. Martyn - the STOL-X thread looks like just the ticket. This is a plane I have had in mind to build - along with the 362 and 363 Deltas, plus Norman Warner's G-ERUP, RM Plan 191, introduced in the January 1978 edition of Radio Modeller. Denis - this hankering after STOL models is partly due to my garden. It backs onto fields, but with other houses left, right and behind us. I CAN fly my little UMX Radian from their, with a hand launch and either a catch or a dodgy touch down ), but there's no way I could get a normal plane in safely. From memory, we have about 0.1 of an acre total, with a nice big raised and terraced area up to 3m height, with hedging and sturdy wooden fencing in the approach All complicated by a 5m x 4m glass-roofed conservatory and a roof-full of Solar panels just waiting to be attacked. And a big pond. 1m deep. For some reason, I am fixated on getting in and out of the garden, but a mistake could be awfully expensive. Soooo much to do, so little time!

This is one of these models "I MUST do one day". A David Davis tempter? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/stol-mk2-55-inch-rc-model-plane-bits/323358966172?hash=item4b49b2419c:g:IgUAAOSw8StbGloy

Snigger . . .

It's "It's" and not "it's".

I agree with John Muir's post. I have had a pupil for a while, who had a SAFE-enabled plane. After a while, he got the hang of what the plane is doing and was eventually persuaded to switch off the stabilisation and fly manually. He found that it wasn't much different from flying with stabilisation and always had the option of switching it back in. 6 months in, he has stripped out the radio gear and installed a non-stabilised normal Rx and fitted a more powerful motor. It was the fear of non-stabilisation flight that was paralysing him initially, and the revelation that the model didn't fall out of the sky with it switched off removed the blinkers. So I reckon the 3 models you have are ALL that you need. As John says, a new model with the same old stabilisation function will just look a bit different, Nothing more. Just fly the models you DO have - you'll soon be enjoying the increased level of control in manual mode and can later form an opinion on the way ahead, without being restricted by someone else's ideas of what's SAFE or not.

Cracknell to the rescue again! Just what I need too - well done that DigiFleet man . .

"... severe control problems …". That sounds like mine! I had a few test flights 2 - 3 months ago and found that, as a glider, the thing flew perfectly well, landing around 40 meters away after a modest hand launch. However, the moment I added power I got into trouble. BIG trouble. I simply couldn't control the thing either in pitch or in yaw. 4 flights, 4 crash landings. This is the first time I can recall having had such a poor record in the best part of 40 years! After the last one the nose area was too badly damaged to continue without major repairs, so I put it aside in disgust - to be attended to at a later date. I like the plane's looks, its size and its glide performance, so it's a keeper. The contents of the nose have now been totally stripped out - quite a job, given that the motor had been fitted by a person with hands half the size of mine! Not to worry, though. It's all in the past and I now plan to bond a plate to the nose to allow easier servicing and adjustment of thrust lines. As I had stiffened up the tail somewhat in anticipation of some wild weather later in the year, this will help with addressing the CG issues. I will bear in mind differential settings as mentioned by Chris Hall 4 and get her flying properly in a goodly number of test glides on both our local shinty pitch and from a small bluff overlooking the same

Got 4 today! At last! 2 for me, 2 for a pal. We intend to set them up for slope-soaring In the windier conditions in the next Autumn/Winter. 2 we intend to have wingerons, as per SpeedsterDEN's set-up, the others as conventional Aileron/Rudder/Elevator machines, all as part of our 60's-heading-for-70-years-of-age fun package.

Unfortunately, no on-line trading in the UK. Roll on next Thursday, when I will bag 2. I want to compare it with my Robotbirds-sourced Felix IQ XL model (see post of 20/11/2018), which is still going strong, and maybe make a really high-powered version as a "just-to-see-if-I-can-make-it/control-it" exercise.

The Radian on Pheonix is, as is the life version, a throttle, rudder, elevator machine only, so there are NO ailerons. Period. If you need to have the primary controls (rudder & elevator) on the one stick, tell the simulator that that's what you want it to do, using the "System" tab and follow BEB's advice above.

Thanks for the heads-up - I picked up one today, plus a nice-enough wee £12.99 rucksack to take my "bits" up on to the hill. I can get this picnic-blanket, a garden kneeling pad, a rolled-up cycling jacket, my Transmitter, 2 water-bottles and a few odds-and-sods tucked neatly into it with no cramming. The sack has a tubular metal frame which keeps the bag off the back and, with a mesh panel, it seems well ventilated. there are chest- and hip-straps for stability. I had it out this afternoon and was rather impressed with it. The picnic blanket's eventual use is intended to be a paid of wing bags, but in the interim, since it fits so neatly in the rucksack, it will no doubt be useful for lying on in the heather either during or between flights. Age, you know? Zzzzzzz . . .

"I'll take that as a compliment (even if it isn't)" - That WAS indeed intended as a compliment. I really DO have Vitrex and Depron sheets in my shed, plus Corruflute, plus a goodly amount of 30-year-old balsa and a real interest in using anything and everything to get machines up in the air. I look forward to seeing your remnants as I have not the slightest compunction in mixing and unmatching to see "if it will".

Nice to know that there are still some "characters" out there. Way out there . . . Now . . . I know where the Vitrex sheets are, but where did I store those depron sheets?

Interesting! I hadn't thought along these lines, but now you've got me thinking . . . Hopefully you'll be posting some flying video - I look forward to this.

The Battery Mounting - I cut out a cardboard-box template to cover the whole of the flat-floor area, then cut out a thin ply sheet and Gorilla-Glued that into the model. I made sure that all the edges had a thin line of glue squeezing out. I then applied Velcro to pretty much the whole area so that I could put anything anywhere to suit myself and the CG. Additional fixing of the battery to individual taste, e.g "... My FunCub now has a length of 1.5mm carbon rod pushed through the fuselage over the top of the battery. It sticks out a little through the snake tube lined holes but is virtually invisible and battery is unlikely to go flying solo ..." and "... I use velcro and a foam block that sits above the battery and fills the gap between it and the hatch cover ...". ​I also lost an undercarriage spring, but still had the hook. I had bought a spare u/c set (£5 or so) as a make-weight on an order, but as I am particularly interested in STOL fun and my "runways" are pretty rough (hence the reinforced floor), I thought that the undercarriage springs were far too weak for what I wanted out of the plane and decided to simply replace the springs with old technology - bungee straps or their equivalent. I simply used thick-ish elastic bands (obtained from a local craft shop for another purpose some months ago) run from hook to hook through the triangular bracket and secured with little plastic zip-ties (3 per leg) to give, effectively, the core of a bungee cord with no fabric covering. I've found that this gives excellent shock-absorption and well-controlled articulation without being too strong and I can't see me changing this until it suffers from u/v deterioration. ​At the tail, I straightened the wheel leg and fitted a larger, softer tailwheel. I also modified the supplied-as-an-option horizontal stabiliser struts as their fittings were silly little things, one of which broke during attempted installation. I simply cut away the heat-shrink of the stays, leaving me with the flat-strip struts. I bonded 2 small plates of thin ply to the stab and another to the underside of the fuselage (this one wider than the fuselage). I then bonded short lengths of balsa strip to these plates to make a housing for the struts and, when dry, used a little epoxy to secure both ends of each strut. This makes the tail end good, strong and still fairly light, although it can't be easily dismantled for transport without a little bit of knife work. This is not a problem for me, as I can transport fully-rigged models of up to 2 metres, but it would be easy enough to modify this setup to be broken down for transport as it's really only the shock of landing that has to be catered for - flight loads seem to be no problem.

Well done - you survived the "paranoia" then?

That's good. I, too, was flying today both with buddy-box and no flap availability and without buddy-box and full flap choices. There's quite a difference in the landings because, as you describe, she floats on a bit without flaps and doesn't want to drop those last six inches. I wouldn't be afraid to engage the flaps - you really DON'T need an elevator mix - you can do it all with your thumbs. Just practice some fly-bys at a safe height and distance and you can gauge how she reacts. To start with, I would arrange the geometry or travel such that there is a reduced level of flap deployment available, say 30 degrees maximum at the full setting, and you'll get the benefits of some increased lift without a huge amount of ballooning. I fly mine quite comfortably on a DX5e, which is very basic and has no mixing facility. After a little practice, it's easy enough to hold in a little down elevator to compensate for the ballooning on deployment and you soon get used to driving her down onto the ground where you want her to land. It helps you with overall control of the model to be less reliant on computer tricks and to know that YOU are the pilot, not the transmitter. I also have other models on my two DX6 Txs - some have flap/elevator mixes, some not, and I'm comfortable with either.