Nigel R

Does any Well, we don't actually know what has happened here, so probably worth avoiding making any wild assumptions about the scenario. I find it a surprising suggestion in the extreme for a telemetry alarm warning of low flight pack voltage to cause a transmitter to stop transmitting, given that the telemetry is for warnings and alarms only and there are no functional changes in TX behaviour that link to telemetry. See https://www.horizonhobby.com/on/demandware.static/Sites-horizon-us-Site/Sites-horizon-master/default/Manuals/SPM6700-Manual_EN.pdf page 19, 32. That said I would note that actively changing telemetry when the TX & RX are switched on will result in the TX briefly interrupting RF output, although again this requires the user to be navigating the menus to the telemetry screen, which is not something to be done during flight, after all we do all our setup on the ground do we not? And that brief interruption in RF output would not cause total loss of control - although it might at worst cause a failsafe hold for a second before control is reestablished.

Hello and welcome

Hs81 are ok but there is a huge caveat, despite the torque rating, they are terrible at holding position under load. The 65 and 85 are both much, much better, for actually flight surfaces. The 81 is also fabulously easy to strip the gears. That said I have a few 81 on throttle duty with no problems. YMMV.

Shouldn't we ask, are they not both fun? Is that not what it's all about?

Seems there are a few turbine manufacturers now. Never had them in the 1980s. Mind you they're external combustion so probably as much out of thread scope as electric... but some folk who would have spent big money on a glow radial in 1985 will now spend that money on a 100N turbine. Subjects been done to death though. IC engines will be around while there are folk who want to use them.

I think the load throttle servos get is sometimes underestimated. An install on an engine where there is a problem with vibration is very very quickly going to be felt by the throttle servo. Elevators are another of those critical single points of failure. Don't undercook the servo selection. Price is what you pay, Value is what you get.

Google for "Solarfilm Sales" - you can still buy the old stock (while it is there) of actual solarfilm and the other films made by solarfilm. It's also price competitive with the hobbyking stuff.

Nice job. A decent fuselage jig is invaluable.

What brand Paul? 100% fail rate is terrible...

Beauty clearly in the eye of the beholder... I quite like the Skysword. It is "a bit different".

just your average low pass 😄

I agree. Especially with heat shrink. It simply slacks off eventually, allowing the warp to return. Open structures rely on covering tension to stay rigid, these really need an appropriate covering, like doped tissue/nylon or perhaps doculam+tissue would do. Heatshrink is only kind of ok when freshly applied, and nicely taught. But it rarely seems to stay that way.

I rescued a solid wood aileron that had badly warped (car + hot day + wing had shifted in transit and I had not realised it was resting on the aileron). I was probably lucky - I managed to do it with a covering iron, and although I expected the heatshrink covering to be ruined after the process, it was OK. As noted above 1 I manually held in an opposite twist while applying heat, and letting it cool. 2 It took a few goes.

At the end of the day, the charger will usually show the cell volts, you can always halt the charge early if you feel balancing is going on too long, especially if the cells are looking pretty close already. Field charging? Maybe you want a quick turnaround for another flight? You can certainly reduce the charge time by a lot, if you push the rate beyond 1C and don't bother with a balance.

A new in box one might go for a bit more. 5 minutes of ebay search suggest: £100 is fire sale £150 is an easy sale £200 if you wait a bit. An FL 70 (not the nicer Surpass 70) went for £200 in Jan.

Yes, but, good luck extracting this info from the manuals... It is certainly possible to start balancing right from the get go, while the high current charge is happening. But cell chemistry dictates that you get better balance with lower currents toward the end. Whether the charger has the "finesse" to do all of this, with gradually reducing balance current, as the balance gradually improves, is another question 😄

Especially if every charge is a balance charge.

The wingtip is already more streamlined than before 😄

Maybe there's some congealed oil in there? If it's way off the previous setting, I think I'd take the needles out and soak the carb in some fresh fuel for a few days. You could try compressed air (if you have some) or blowing "backward" through the carb. That might dislodge something. It has worked for me in the past on an engine or two that have also had an extended period without running like yours. Failing that I'd strip the carb, there are not too many moving parts in these things.

This is a bit hazy, but: Wasn't there an update for one of receivers to enable the 20mS frame rate? IIRC the RX would tell you it bound with 20ms, but was actually using 11ms. 11ms is disliked (in a magic smoke sort of way) by some servos.

No change to the general party line of "operator is responsible for making sure the drone is safe", as far as I can tell.

Hello and welcome I'd steer clear of sticky tape for covering, the rolls of heat shrink film are tailor made for the job. You won't need to cover an RC airframe with basswood. The structure will be strong enough without it.

I think LiFe is a single specific chemistry. The terminal voltage is different to the typical LiPo cell that we use, so they're "easy" to tell apart, I guess. LiPo is more a construction method. Can include many variations of lithium chemistry, gel makeup, polymer, and cathode material. Both degrade with heat and extreme of charge/discharge, which includes developing the gas build up / puffing problem. Slow or fast charge? Just wondering if there has been a heat build-up issue, where the pack was buried inside a model during charging; fast charge might well exacerbate that.

Looks rather battle worn at this point! Phil, I thought it was the LiFe chemistry that was "less prone" to inflating. Maybe this pack had an internal fault that caused the swelling? Although it looks like both cells have swollen.

More high tech than my answer. Just goes to show, a little practice means even a makeshift tool can get good results. My low tech answers... For flat surfaces, I poke a scalpel blade through some scrap balsa to make a centre gauge (if it doesn't mark the exact centre, I have another go). Once I've marked out the slots with the above high tech centre gauge, I use a snapped stanley blade to make the hinge slot. If that all comes out "just a tiny bit off one way", I lightly fret out one side of the slot a fraction. For this I have a snapped off piece of metal band clamp - one side of the band is smooth, and the other has some roughness where the screw slots are stamped. It works far better for me than the dubro hinging centreline widget, which seems to be marginally worse than not using one at all, except that I paid £10 for the privilege of messing up some hinge slots. The ultimate low tech, low cost, self aligning hinge... use nylon string and sew them together.