David E

Must have been a configuration change by my hosting company - I didn't change anything! Glad you can see them now, anyway!

Are they working for you now?

Probably my fault. I think the photos were hosted on my website but it's being rebuilt at the moment. Hadn't expected people to be still looking at it a few years on tbh. Will try to get them back online e eventually. I'll repost here if I can.

Patmc, Roger, (sorry, quote doesn't work in mobile) if the same aircraft gets 34% heavier, it needs 34% more lift, as Patmc says. This is because for stable flight lift is always equal to weight. If they weren't equal the model would be accelerating towards or away from the ground! However it isn't necesssary to fly 34% f aster to increase lift by 34%, as this can be achieved by increasing the angle of attack at the same speed. However, if you increase the angle of attack too much you will stall. This is why the stall speed is higher when you increase the weight. So, you may have to fly faster, but only if needed to avoid a stall. To put it another way, you won't be able to fly as slowly. The plane will feel faster, but only if there is enough power, as the higher angle of attack means more drag! Putting in extra weight without increasing power will actually reduce the top speed, as you'll need more throttle to fly at the same speed. Net result, if I haven't confused my physics, is that adding weight but not power reduces the range of speeds you can fly - you must fly faster to stay in the air, but you can't fly as fast. Does that sound right?

Slippy, mine slows down fine and it's glassed underneath. It has a very tame stall indeed.

If the parcel is already in the post, surely filing a claim with HK will not affect delivery? :-s I have had one or two parcels from HobbyKing take an extraordinarily long time to arrive. But I've placed a lot of orders and all the rest have been within the expected limits. Never did understand why it took so long when it goes by plane though. Maybe customs?

I don't think that signal loss would necessarily be for longer periods, which would be more typical of a receiver brownout. Can you post a photo of your receiver and satellite installation? Are either near the battery pack, ESC, or other metal objects? How far apart are they? Are the two receivers oriented with their antennas at 90degrees to the other receiver's antennas? Is the receiver light flashing upon landing? (This would indicate Rx brownout during the flight, although disconnecting and reconnecting the Rx battery without power cycling the Tx will also cause it.) It's a bit of a long shot, but could the ESC timing setting cause anything like this?

On the subject of location, better not put it in Scotland, might end up in the wrong country

I don't reckon that's how it works. You pay VAT on the purchase, and not on import. http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/how_vat_works/index_en.htm says: "No frontier controls exist between Member States and therefore VAT on goods traded between EU Member States is not collected at the internal frontier between tax jurisdictions." If the guy was really charged VAT on a parcel from Germany, I think he was robbed.

Shouldn't have had to pay any VAT from germany. Not sure about import duty. Are you 100% sure it wasn't ordered from Hong Kong by mistake.   The handling charges are £8.something for Royal Snail and £13.50 for Parcel Farce.

Just thought people might find it useful to know that the low value exemption threshold on imports has been reduced from £18 to £15 as of 1st november.   In my limited experience of shipping via EMS (arrives via Parcel Farce) recently you are more likely to get stung on VAT (£20 order prior to exemption change) and you get hit with a filthy £13.50 handling fee, which is completely unjustifiable in my opinion. With normal air mail orders, I've not been hit on orders up to about £23, despite declaring the proper value. I suspect that will change now though with the new threshold.   I'm having trouble at the moment with a couple of parcels from HK which seem to have dissapeared to add insult to injury! Now they'll be the wrong side of the exemption cos of the delay if they do turn up too! Edited By David E on 14/11/2011 12:44:27

A quick look at Goosdale Model Flying Club's website suggests that Goosdale's museum might have been a residential property owned by it's founder, who has since died, and the property is now owned by someone else. Some of that is conjecture though!

Hmm, I need a bit of convincing that this isn't just a way of most members subsidising the internationally competative elite.   Co-locating with Cosford sounds like a reasonable idea though if it were to go ahead.   The problem with buying up sites is that they will get developed around and become unsuitable for model flying. The only way to avoid this is what the AMA have done - buy up a huge swathe of farmland around and rent it out for farming. I'm not sure the income from that would be enough to create an income after paying off the loan to buy it.

Nice pic   Why do I get the feeling that this forum isn't very heli friendly??!

The MCPX seems pretty good outdoors as well as indoors. Seems to cope with the wind surprisingly well!   The HK450 is a fairly good bet too, though be sure to read up online about things to check / fix before flying.

Interesting. I wonder if any Tx allow aileron differential to be altered with flaperon setting? This might mitigate the tip stall problem slightly. I suppose coordinating rudder with aileron at low speed might help reduce the tenancy to tip stall on aileron input, as it should increase the airspeed over the wing with higher effective angle of incidence?

Am I right in thinking the problem with flaperons is that they are often near the wingtip? If there is a reasonable section of wing tip outboard of the ailerons, are you still likely to have tip stalls?   What about if the ailerons run the full length of the trailing edge? Shouldn't this be increasing the effective angle of attack of the whole wing rather than introducing wash-in?   I suppose the ideal situation is inboard flaps and outboard ailerons, so that flaps effectively add wash-out, and the ailerons have most leverage for roll authority?

When I log on from a different computer, it shows me the option to vote in the poll again not the results... shouldn't it be linked to account not to a cookie specific to the computer (and which can be deleted very easily)

I've heard that mode 1 was derived from early radio sets that had an up/down (elevator) stick on the left and a left/right (aileron/rudder) stick on the right, and that was it for controls - I guess that engines just ran until it ran out of fuel? Not sure if this is accurate though.   To me, mode 2 is far more natural as it is more analogous to a real aircraft's controls, whether that be fixed wing or helicopter, but I can see why mode 1 could seem logical to some for fixed wing aerobatics/3D.   What I haven't got my head around is people flying helis on mode 1! I can't see any way that that's intuitive, and learning to fly a model heli is challenging enough as it is...

Ok, maybe this is a bit off the wall, but how about a multiplex Funjet?

Interesting to hear the ongoing discussion from a variety of points of view on this and the reasons for the introduction of the rule.   It still troubles me that lots of clubs seem to be saying, in effect, "unless you fly heavy models, we don't think you're serious enough about this hobby and won't let you fly solo at our club."   This can't be good for the hobby in the long term can it?   Is it possible that the reason that some only see people who fly heavyweight models at their club is that the club rules present this attitude to newcomers who would otherwise start with a low-budget model?   Certainly at the club I'm at, it doesn't work like this. We don't operate a no-A-certificate-no-solo rule. We've had a lot of ab-initio new members in the last few years, perhaps because of offering a cheap and straightforward enty. Many of them have started off on foamies under 1kg. Most people are willing to find the cash to fund "getting serious" with a hobby once they find that they really enjoy it and the novelty doesn't wear off, but it seems to me that for many, right at the start, spending several hundred pounds on something they're likely to take home in a bin bag just isn't going to happen.   Unfortunately in many areas the only clubs available treat the A-certificate as a licence to fly solo. While previously I've had no issues with this as it is a convenient benchmark of the ability to operate a model plane safely, now it seems to me to present a danger of being perceived as a snobby attitude by newcomers to the hobby.Edited By David E on 13/07/2011 12:58:39

Interesting! So why is flying a model over 1kg any harder than flying a model under 1kg? I'd have said it was easier. If someone is capable of flying a small, light trainer, why would those skills not scale up? Wouldn't it be better to use the B-certificate as a requirement for more advanced flying rather than making nodels flying inaccessible to those in a very tight budget? Dave, I agree. With this change the A-certificate has become too narrowly defined for some fliers and some clubs. Perhaps there needs to be a new certificate for electric flight only. Another possibility would be a certificate for those that only want to fly hand launch electric models that aren't glider. At my club the field we use most (there is a 2nd) is relatively small and permits electric flight only. Most of us don't fly ICE powered models. Imho this new rule really shuts out some newcomers. When it comes to discussion about cost of larger models, please remember budgets are relative. To many who are dipping their toes in the water, and don't want to commit lots of cash to a hobby that may not work out for then, the price of a 1kg trainer is definitely prohibitive.

Hi, it was pointed out to me that the A-certificate info from the BMFA states a 1kg minimum weight for models. My brother has a relatively small electric trainer, that falls well under this. Are BMFA examiners really likely to refuse to do the test with such an aircraft? This minimum weight limit seems outdated and too focussed on ICE power to me. Ok, so the wind will need to be lower to carry out the test, but it seems unfair that beginners without deep enough pockets for larger, more powerful planes should be excluded from such a baseline competency test. Any thoughts?

Well! I finally got my Alienator flying last night! That took me a while!   The elevator servo (Futaba S120?) turned out to be ropey so I switched round the elevator and rudder, and disconnected the rudder and locked it in place.   It flies nicely, except that there is a nose-up tendancy under power. As there isn't much scope for adding downthrust, due to the way the motor is mounted (I reused the 600 motor mounting method from the previous owner) I may just have to add a throttle-to-elevator mix. It has an impressively shallow glide angle, which means I think I need to learn to slow it down more for landings. The stall seems impressively benign.   I was surprised that it wasn't faster or more powerful - it's definately less than 1:1 thrust to weight. (Forgot to check the AUW actually.)   The wattmeter shows 380W WOT, and a tacho shows 13,000 rpm on the 7x6 aeronaut folding prop (50mm spinner).   I'm thinking that it will make a very nice night flier though.   Unfortunately I ran out of paint half way through repainting, so it looks a bit of a mess at the moment!   The canopy retention arrangements are a bit daft, so I'm replacing with magnets.   Still think it's ugly! My wife keeps complaining about it! :D

Seems strange that the fix is a firmware update but you can't do it from the SD card. Guess they're doing something a little more fundamental to it.   Indeed, I am glad Spektrum are willing to admit to problems and do recalls.