Bruce Collinson

Jon, leasehold reform/enfranchisement is complex and potentially costly but I practice it so if this is under consideration, pm me and I will try to steer you in the right direction. The current edition of Which magazine (Consumers Association) has a piece on electric heating which you might find useful. If you can’t source it you can have mine when I’ve read it, typically a week. Bruce

Jon, what’s it’s EPC score like? bruce

The daft thing is, Evri is outstandingly the best of a very bad bunch of delivery couriers round here, as the lady who operates it is conscientious and can speak English. Didn’t stop them losing an expensive lighter I tried to send for repair and had to sue them in Small Claims. Successfully.

suspect it depends how you plumb it, but mine won’t prime manually and I don’t use the chicken stick in my flightbox anyway. I like all my digits as far away from the prop as I can get them. The modern way, which I adopted when I returned several years ago, is a modern starter and a LiPo which will all fit in a flight box. I use a geared JEN starter and its purpose made battery frame, which bolts on, with an older 4s LiPo. It will start up to 150 4 strokes and 25cc petrol and it’s cordless, although you can run it off the flightbox battery. You might get voltage drops to the glow driver whilst starting unless that’s also cordless. Some of my club mates like the chicken stick and reverse flick method but if the OS isn’t primed it won’t start, hence the electric starter as per OS’s manual. The JEN starter has one trait, it can weld its contacts occasionally and nobody seems to know how to prevent this. Otherwise it has given good service. Hope this helps. BTC

Bit dystopian by your standards Richard, or have you o/d on orange Haribos?

Better than it being done by a dyspraxic jobsworth, wouldn’t you agree? Never forget, there are three sorts of accountants; those who can add up and those who can’t.

John, Agenda: Aplogies Consider and adopt accounts Approve budget inc. subs increase. As a committee member my club sec forwarded to me this morning. Andy S emailed it out late last night. Your club sec should have it. B.

Apparently Neil was at Buckminster on Saturday but nobody told me until later. Pity. BTC

I’ve just seen the invitation to Club officials to an EGM specifically to sign off the accounts and vote on the proposed £2 increase in subs (for which the consensus on Saturday was that it’s about half a tank of 5% fuel). It might have escaped the attention of some members that the budget is being calculated to accommodate the slow decline in membership, just enough, no more. As a budget, of course it predicts membership = revenue so may not be absolutely correct, in which case the budget for the following year would undoubtedly be re-set accordingly. This looks and sounds to me to be sound management. As an online meeting, on 26th November at 7 pm, anyone with an axe to grind has ample opportunity to make representations to his/her/their Club delegate, or indeed to attend as an observer. Doubtless we will all be availing ourselves of this democratic process, won’t we? BTC

The National Centre is already rented out to a number of events and organisations which generates income. The recently completed cafe is an excellent addition too, proving sufficiently popular that it's in profit, I understand.

Yes, we will all be dead, unless under the age of 50-odd. Those that survive that long will very likely have an opportunity to vote on whether or not to take a new lease.

I must have been frazzled. 465 lots, not the 270 I alluded to above. B

Might be a crafty Petit Churchill for after; I believe I’ve earned it. BTW was just skimming the ritual whingeing about subs and the National Centre costs; what the Centre staff and volunteers have achieved this weekend, and in the run up to lotting, photographing, describing and handling 270 lots will have generated much income for the Association. B

Thanks John. Am getting outside of a 2018 Rioja with a half corona and chilling out. sorry you weren’t successful, but some of the bids were very strong and the sale total is exceptionally good. For a hobby which is, by some versions, withering, there are some very enthusiastic modellers out there! Another sale in 3 weeks, start saving up! B

Totally irritating.

Interesting. Three much better pilots than me fly them regularly and I have never heard the complaint about shape-changing. Re the Inspiration; I have both and the Olympus is a better plane all round, once modified as above. Just feels more planted, on rails, like an F3A should. The gap is probably about the same as between the Olympus and the Sebarts referred to so hope you can find a good used one. BTC

Peter, As you know, I’d defer to you in all matters F3A but it seems to me that Steve asked about a Ford Focus and is now being steered towards an M3! Bruce

Michael Portillo!

One of my clubmates passed his A and B using his, on the same day, earlier this season. He's now flying C schedules with it. Two coats of polyurethane varnish make it infinitely easier to clean, if you fly off grass shared with sheep. Front-on visibility can be indifferent so judicious use of Oraltrim in fluo colours and/or invasion stripes may help. Two pilots use gyros which arguably extend their usefulness in blustery or turbulent air, although you'd presumably turn it off if flying any sort of schedule. Opinions differ on the benefit of the winglet. Probably only helps with knife edge, but it didn't help me with my first one. Spookily, two of us are "progressing" to Angels; fly on the same LiPo. I hope this helps you to make up your mind and I'm sure you'll enjoy it. BTC

Is very good, three flown just this afternoon at NLMFC. Two more in the pits. Fully aerobatic and fairly vice-free but need flying in to land and the u/c is made of Chinesium. Replacement with 10 swg is a big improvement. Wing fix bolts can be fiddly, worth swapping s/s for magnetic steel and use a magnet on a stick to extract them. i think I’m on my third …..

Nobody has referred to the C word. Cataracts (sorry Don, don’t know the French word.). Hopefully, en France, they intervene a lot quicker than our sanctified NHS does. I don’t know the word for optometrist either but I’d start there. in my recent experience, a year ago, two new lenses made vision when flying a lot easier and NB Don, has had no discernible effect on my shotgunning vision. Plus I don’t need readers except for very close up, and can now see the car instruments without glasses.

Lots of the electrickery is beyond me, but a standard 4-Max ESC IN A 6S setup, so 80 Amps I think, would not operate E-flite retracts reliably and we ended up with a separate Rx battery, smallish 2S LiFe, which cured the problem.

Forthcoming BMFA auction stuffed with them.

My LMS stocks it.

For those wallowing in nostalgia's warm bath, another thread reminds me that the next auction has oodles of engines, amongst which there are bound to be favourites. Mine were DC Merlin and Spitfire, then a PAW 19D which frightened me to death (at 15). My first Laser 100 started the instant it was shown the starter.