Mike Bell

Have you tried Vortex. I assume they are still around, if so they have a wide range of canopies so one might suit.

Despite the risk of ruining my reputation as a methanol head, count me in.

No cos it's b****y windy. Can't win.

I am personally not keen on using those type of receivers in anything more than a park fly type of model. The range is fine for these and it sounds as though you have been OK so far on your own model. My concern is that if you fly with other transmitters swithched on or in other circumstances where the signal could be weakened the limited range of your receiver could be reduced further. Certainly if you progress to bigger and more powerful models you should really consider a higher end receiver.

I've just spent the last month or three getting to grips with a petrol jobbie (our Martin's) and have the following observations. 1 Standard dustbin silencers can definitely be a bit noisy. Fitting a larger can type silencer made a huge difference but at a price and you need the space to house it. Make sure a good, quiet exhaust is available for your chosen engine. 2 You need to be careful with gear installation because of the risk of interference from the ignition module. In most cases simply making sure the rx and module are separated by at least 12 - 15 inches is enough but in our case we seem to have had more trouble than most in getting to a satisfactory installation. All the rest of my observations are positive ie clean fuel, reliable running, excellent pick up, easy starting etc. Don't be put off by the first two points, if you take them into account going petrol can be a very positive experience.

My most useful item is LOADS'A WOOD. After that it would be Permagrit sanding tools.

Shaun, You need both the adhesive surface of the trim and the surface of the film you are going to attach it to covered in water. Don't worry about over doing it as the aim is to have a film of water between the two surfaces until you are satisfied with the position. Once you are happy a firm press down on the letter will disperse the water and let the adhesive do it's stuff. Don't put too much detergent in though as this can interfere with the bond. Once pressed into place mop up with kitchen towel.

Hi Malcolm, ref Outlaw - just goes to show I shouldn't speed read.

If it isn't too late for an alternative suggestion, try to find someone with a plan for the Keil Kraft Outlaw. Superb model on 3 channel, was originally designed for free flight so it has all the best characteristics for a trainer.

Sorry but if you use the "B" word on this site I'll have to tell the moderator.

Peter's comments are spot on regarding the fact that ARTFs are assembled by poorly paid factory workers who have no interest or knowledge of the end use of the product. They are also often built using woods that are both heavy and brittle even if they are glued. The cost of virtually all ARTFs is artificially low and only achievable by the use of third world labour and cheap materials. This is not an appropriate environment for the promotion of quality so it is no surprise that some are a bit dodgy. How long will it take. I wonder, before things go full circle and people go back to building their own? The trouble is that there will be almost no surviving kit market to satisfy the demand should it arise. Still, there are plenty of good plans out there.

Personally I slot the wing, tail or whatever, fit the hinges and wick in some thin cyano. I cut the slots a bit over long and use the excess bit to wick the cyano into to get better penetration as per Bob's drilled hole. Then I mark and slot the mating control surface insert the hinges and repeat. The other advice I would give is to use the mylar with a furry surface. This really lets the glue grip. If I feel the need to pin hinges I use cocktail sticks by pushing the pointy end into a pre-drilled hole so it just goes past the hinge, snip off with wire cutters, push flush and add a dab of cyano. I usually only pin the hinges at each end of a surface.

I think the general rule for angle of attack on canards is to have 2 degrees positive. I don't know if you have seen pics of my son Martin's Fun Fly canards of the last couple of years, but these weird contraptions both had around 2 degrees on the foreplanes. Remember to have any control surfaces on the canards working opposite to a normal elevator ie up elevator would be down on the canard surface.

Hi Myron, For servos I don't think you need anything fancier than standard types so long as they fit in the section. I use Futaba 3001 as a rule but if you are really pushed for space the Ripmax S2000 might do. I personally wouldn't bother with another two in the top wing - it would be a load of extra wiring, weight and expense and the interplane links actually work pretty well.

When designing unorthodox models I've always found that making a scale chuck glider out of 1/16th balsa works very well to determine the rough c of g. Make it to a reasonably scale outline with canard incidences etc about right and adjustthe glider c of g with blu tack until it glides flat and stable. It is surprising how accurate this can be.

I built a Puppetteer about 15 years ago - in fact it's still in the loft. In my case I put a Laser 75 in the front so I had to hack away quite a bit of the firewall to make it fit. I didn't lengthen the nose but I would certainly not worry abour aerodynamic problems stemming from a few mil here and there. A couple of pieces of advice I would offer are: 1 Blank part of the front of the cowl opening off so that only the cylinder head is exposed. I had overheating probs with mine due to the air taking the lazy way past the engine rather than through the fins. 2 Operating the ailerons via a bellcrank system and a single servo isn't very effective. On mine I couldn't get a lot of movement and the servo struggled a bit. I would reccommend installing two servos in the lower wing. Other than that it was a great model for lazy touch and goes and slow fly bys with the enging farting away on fast tick over like a real one. I think I'm going to have to go into the loft and get it out again.

Hi Phil, The Stiletto was designed by my son Martin. Having noticed the error on the plan he has produced a bitmap of the correct sections and has sent copies of these to a number of builders. If you would like a copy I can arrange to send you one, of course I will need an e-mail address. You will need to scale the bitmap yourself to get it to print the correct size but this shouldn't be a problem.

In these days of cheap ARTFs, second hand bargains at swap meets and generally more disposable income it is not unusual for beginners to acquire several models before they've even flown the first one. My advice to go along with the joining a club etc is; settle on a sensible model to learn on and stick to it. Don't bring a different model to the field every couple of weeks, you'll only spend most of your precious instruction time trimming it out and getting used to the different characteristics. You will be making very poor use of your instructors time as well as your own. Stick to your one model until you know it inside out and concentrate on the flying skills.

A word of caution to anyone building the DeAgostini Spit, a chap in a local club was asked to test fly one and he reported that although it actually flew pretty well, he suffered aileron flutter. Investigation revealed that the push rods to the ailerons were too thin or not very well supported, or both. He found a similar issue with the elevator push rod too. It would be worth checking yours out by tring to move the surfaces by hand against the servo with the gear switched on. If the surface moves easily you may need to beef the push rod up.

Ads, Wash out means having the tip of the wing at a lower angle of attack than the centre of the wing, the idea being that the centre of the wing will always stall first hence avoiding the dreaded tip stall. With wash out in the wing you could look at the wing end on and see that the trailing edge of the tip would look higher than at the root. This progression should be gradual from root to tip hence the tapered spacer while building. I would carefully check the plan, though, because arranging the packing as you describe (thin to tip) you would actually give wash in which is definitely not good. To build the wing just place the packing under the ribs as directed by the plan and build normally.

Antony, I would advise benchmarking. In other words, search through the mags (RCM&E obviously) and find models of about the size and type you are considering then look at what engine ranges they are designed for. I'm sure that there are some calculations you could do but simple copying is so much easier.

Tony, I don't know all the scientific detail of what fuel does to wood, I suspect is has to do with the breakdown of lignin, but I'm no biologist. What I do know is the wood goes all spongy and weak and once the fuel is in it's all down hill from there. Regarding Dulux, I haven't tried it but I do know that Japlac (from B&Q) seems to work. I presume you are only talking about doing the engine bay rather than painting a whole model. The latter would be rather heavy.

Hello Toby, I repair my shockies by butt joining the bits with UHU Por used in contact adhesive mode. This stuff is flexible so the joints don't shatter like cyano ones do. Once glued I use sellotape over the joints to reinforce and in the case of joins near the motor mount I would glue and tape a length of carbon strip (or tbin ply)as a splint across the joins in a couple of places. It is possible to keep a shockie going quite a long time like this - until you are flying more sellotape than depron. You can avoid the front end damage thing (well delay it a bit anyway) by gluing a length of carbon tube along the centre line of the fuz. 6mm tube adds a lot of strength and when the model does eventually die you can recycle it into the next one.

Ben, Are you sure there aren't any kinks in the fuel lines? I would expect the engine to die completely at 10 turns or at least be spitting fuel all over, so I suspect a fuel flow issue. If all is OK the change from 5 turn slobbering rich to 2-3 turn 2 stroke should be really obvious. I've used Pitts type silencers before with no strange effects.

The only exception I can think of to the advice so far is in the case of a pusher engined configuration. In that case the tank should be full otherwise the model could end up tail heavy.