Simon Feather

Here's a Cub doing the same, looks like this guy took a similar approach:   Edited By Simon Feather on 25/07/2018 16:45:52

For anyone interested in referring to original prototypes for scale modelling - or even just for general interest - I recently found this website for the National Naval Aviation museum at Pensacola, Florida: **LINK** Of especial interest is the virtual tour that lets you wander around the museum and zoom in on exhibits (click the virtual tour link at the top of their home page, or here for convenience: **LINK**) Of very especial interest are the cockpit 360 degree views that sit you in the pilot or gunner's seat and let you have a really good look around! You can sit in a ME262 or SBD Dauntless pilot's seat and many more... fantastic stuff. Look for the "Cockpits" button at the bottom left of the virtual tour. Enjoy, I did

I have two as well - as pointed out the u/c isn't great, especially the nosewheel steering. I took the u/c off, filled in the wheel wells, and hand launch, goes away a treat. Stiffened booms a must. Here's one of mine after being treated to a paint job after it went in the river due to the LVC kicking in on a very cold day last winter: no ill effects, everything dried out and off it goes again. I fly on 2700 4S, and have recorded 16 min flights - use power to climb then glide for a few circuits, very smooth and relaxing. But full on low passes are fun too! Fantastic little model. The canopy is brittle and can break very easily; but I made a plug and vacformed my own.

Mine has removable boards on it made of 1/2" veneered MDF offcuts from a kitchen refurb, to which have been glued two thicknesses of (sacrificial) cork tiles, good for pinning into and absorbs scalpel cuts when trimming, and the boards can be moved around to get the best fit as needed depending on the job in hand e.g. wing building, or to form basic shooting boards for sanding edges, or whatever. Very flexible and easy to replace a tile if one gets too bad. The cork tiles came with a surface treatment as they were intended for bathroom use.

+1 for the servo fixing screws, and not just used for servos! I've used them to fix cowls and all sorts of other stuff. Re the circlip - they do an identification service too, I believe, where you send them something and they send it back with the matched part, so if you were in any doubt as to what to order that could work.

I'm feeling depressed already...

I heart my Silhouette Portrait. I've done paint masks for clubmates (e.g. a large Miles Hawk), and one of the first things I did was our club logo, scanned from an old sticker, now I can do highly detailed any size any colour I want as long as it fits on the print bed: and everything on here - roundels, numbers, and including the intricate (but upside down - oops) Yorkshire Rose was done on the Silhouette: value for money = 11 / 10 The Portrait is a bit cheaper than the Cameo, I've not compared them directly but the Portrait has managed to do everything I've needed and in spades! Blades aren't cheap,around £9, but I've done a lot of cutting and not had to replace it yet. If you've not already got some, I recommend you get some transfer tape - this lets you cut intricate markings, weed them, then use the transfer tape to move all the separate bits as a single entity to your model. The other most useful item is a simple domestic spray bottle filled with a mild detergent mix: spray this on first, then the fresh decals can be slid around precisely until you're happy with the positioning, then squeegeed out. Without this, you have exactly one go to get it right...     Edited By Simon Feather on 19/06/2018 23:04:24

Some modern LED lights will also give the 3000 rpm reading on the tacho, it's not just fluorescents! But I suspect that's not the issue here, though it is a useful confidence check. If, as has happened to me before, the blade count switch has been knocked from 2 blade to 3 blade in the flight bag... it'll read 3000 rpm on a two blade setting, but only 2000 rpm on the 3 blade setting, which if you then use to measure a 2 blade prop is going to give you a low reading against the engine!

Martin, for what it's worth, and in case anything here is useful for you, I did a KF3 50th anniversary tribute build last year, blog here: **LINK** Not a Flea I know, but may be of use/interest. Since it was a tribute, I was more interested it getting it to look as close as possible to the original. The canopy came from Vortex Vacforms as did Martyn's, though I've since built a simple vacformer. regards Simon

that's my line!

oh dear oh dear oh dear **LINK** ... and several more like this

Hi, I have the Waco, which I got about 3 years ago. I guess it depends what you want, and how much you are prepared to put up with... they are built to a price point, so you need to remember that. Mine was pretty terrible: I found the quality control very sadly lacking - the first one I had went back, it was so bad; the second one arrived and the fin was shaped like a banana, and the tailplane was "S" shaped. I couldn't be bothered to send it back again, so fixed it with some carbon strip, epoxy and heavy weights overnight. The paint job was terrible - lots and lots of black overspray, the black strip on the leading edge didn't join in the middle - by about 5mm!! and the "Walk" areas on the wings were far from rectangular, so I had lots of "fixing" to do to get an acceptable looking model. The "landing lights" consisted of red LEDs in black cutouts (!!), so that had to be fixed and I put them on a switch whilst at it. The paint finish was matt, which the full size isn't, and in any case would get very grubby very quickly, so I lacquered the whole thing too. I had to paint the cabanes as well as they were just bare metal. But after all that, it turned into a nice flying model - except that the motor was extraordinarily loud! Mostly, I think, due to the low number of poles on the motor. The noise caused a lot of comments, and I eventually stopped using it for a while until I got around to changing the motor. I still have the model, and it still gets used as a lunchtime throw-in-the-car hack. The foam is not the dense stuff you get with some models, and picks up hangar rash VERY easily and quickly - they look rather moth eaten very soon, so mine looks rather tatty now despite the lacquer. Others I know who have had them seem also to have had issues with retracts - especially where the retracts are mounted in the foam wing, which is simply not really strong enough to cope with heavier landings. I've seen retract units burst right through the wing. So it depends what you're looking for! Just don't expect too much...

Posted by Martin McIntosh on 15/05/2018 23:07:06: Same as I have but with the HK failover switch of which I use several already Martin, your pointer to the HK failover switch was interesting, I hadn't spotted they did an own brand. PowerBox I know about, so I just went to look up the HK switch. The HK own-brand failover switch is (today) £13.42, but HK also stock the PowerBox (£58.78 from the international warehouse). They look remarkably similar. The similarities don't end with just the looks though.... here's a quote from the PowerBox instructions: "The total voltage loss in the PowerBox Sensor (de-coupling diodes and voltage regulators) is about 0.35 V, which is so low that the volume of waste heat is almost negligible. The specified maximum continuous current is 5.0 Amps, which means that it easily cope with 6 - 8 standard servos or 5 - 7 digital servos. However, the rated continuous current of 5.0 A does not reflect the capacity of the electronics; it is a function of the size of heat-sink employed. The electronic circuit is able to handle twice the specified power without problem. " Here's a quote from the blurb for the Hobbyking own brand version: "The total voltage loss in the HobbyKing Sensor is about .35v which is so low that the volume of waste heat is almost negligible. The maximum continuous current is 5A which means it can easily handle up to 8 servos. However the rated continuous current of 5A does not reflect the capacity of the electronics which can handle much more for short periods, depending on ambient air temperature." Spot the difference... One of the things I do in my job is to review academic papers, and stuff like this jumps out. To me, these words are just a little too close for comfort.

If you haven't noticed yet, Solarfilm's online ordering site seems to be up and running. I've just managed to place an order for some Solartex... https://solarfilm.co.uk/ Edited By Simon Feather on 13/04/2018 12:19:05

as promised, here is some video of the Zero maiden (see post one above): uneventful apart from a little ballooning when I first used the flaps. This video only includes the last circuit or so where I checked the legs were down then the landing: I hadn't realised I was being filmed!

Here's my Seagull Zero, which maidened on Sunday. It's not straight out of the box - I've modified it a bit to get it a bit more scale-ish. There wasn't much I could do about the cartoon cowl, unfortunately it needs to be that long unless the engine compartment is significantly shortened. I matted down the high-gloss finish, repainted the cowl and exhaust stubs (had silver machine gun slots and bright gold exhausts! pah!), gave it a new pilot, instrument panel and gun sight, new vinyl decals and a more scale-like aerial post. Inside, I converted the rudder to pull-pull, and it's running on dual batteries with a simple switchover harness just in case. ASP120FS up front with a painted prop and better spinner from Warbird Replicas (why o why o why do Seagull issue sharp pointy nasty plastic sports spinners with this kind of kit...). On-board glow and Eflite retracts underneath. As you can see, I've not yet fitted the gear doors, I wanted to wait until post-maiden before doing that. There is some video footage of the maiden which I'll post when I get from my clubmate. This is a super, solid flying model. Massive, massive fun, looks and sounds stupendous on a low pass with that 120FS burbling away. Simon

Lucas, I fly mine with 8mm on the ailerons; I have 12mm set on the high rates, it's very sensitive at that setting. I have rather more - 30mm on elevator and rudder. It probably doesn't need that much on the elevator, but the large deflection on the rudder makes for very nice stall turns. One thing to watch out for - did you use the "recommended" ply horns for the aileron linkages? I did, and the holes have worn and become enlarged to the point where there is a lot of slop on the top ailerons. With hindsight, I should have made fibreglass ones. I shall bush them at some point when I want a rest from other jobs: if yours is still on the bench you may want to preempt that the problem and apply some bushings before it become an issue. I am contemplating going to the BMFA swap meet and fly-in on Sunday, to have a nose around Buckminster; if I do, I shall take the Skywriter as the engine is now healthy once more (pinprick hole in the clunk tube, so small as to be invisible to the eye - but clearly there as lots of bubbles appeared in the fuel line in the nose up test. Tube replaced, no problems now). Simon

Well, after a season flying the Skywriter, and with the weather so inclement, I finally last weekend got around to completing the markings on the top wing and added the yellow lozenges I'd always intended to put on as this is masquerading as a Nimrod... still a favourite, though currently on the Naughty Step due to a split clunk pipe. Luckily I've made the tank fairly easily removable so shouldn't take long to sort out. Simon Edited By Simon Feather on 04/04/2018 20:01:47