EvilC57

My late father kept diaries dating from when he was young in the 1940s, right through until shortly before he died in 2009. I inherited these, and have just got around to reading through a number of them (the ethicality of this is for another discussion!). In early January 1963 he bought a new Morris 1100 ( I just about remember this, as I was about 6 at the time). It seems that in the week he bought it he wrote a snag list, as follows: Driver's inner door handle sticks in open position. Blister in paint on boot lid. Chips in paint on delivery. Loud buzz behind dashboard. High petrol consumption (26mpg). Offside rear door difficult to shut. Headlamps need setting. Engine runs on after switching off ignition. Steering stiff and sqeaks (won't castor). Boot lid rubs body. Windscreen washers u/s. Engine lumpy and hunts on hills. Offside windscreen wiper misses window. Courtesy light u/s. 2 weeks later, there is a note which says "Finished underseal". Remember those days of doing your own?! In the middle of February he wrote a 2nd snag list, as follows: Near side rear door leaks. Driver's door handle still sticks up. Rubber boot on gear lever split. Loss of coolant. Front passenger seat adjustment jammed. Clutch judders in 2nd gear. Indicator won't cancel when turning right. In June he lists a number of things he needs to do himself to service the car, including: Clean and check points & plugs, check tappets, weaken mixture, set timing advance. In July he wrote a 3rd list: Boot on gear lever split again. Near side front window winder faulty. Clunk from wiper motor. Clunk from suspension on pulling away (rear drag link?). Offside front corner of car hangs low. There are various other references to car suspension hanging low throughout the year. Seems BMC's hydrolastic suspension wasn't up to much - like most of the rest of the car!. We don't know how lucky we are today!!! Me with the offending car in about 1963 or 64 (I no longer have the rubber duck).

One of our chaps turned up with a decent camera at the field one day last week, and took these for me while I flew around with my Multiplex 330SC and Pushy Cat. Then 3 of us got together with our Phase 3 EF-16s.

It’s a shame the EF16 is not still available. It made an ideal first EDF, relatively fast when you want it to be, but comes in to land quite slowly because it’s so light. I’m on my second one, which is one of my regular all weather hacks. I don’t keep count, but it must have had hundreds of flights by now. Several people in our club still have them, and sometimes we’ve managed to get 4 or 5 of them all whizzing around together ?.

Yep, that’s the theory I work on with my EF16. Mainly white on top, and black underneath.

This is my well worn Phase 3 EF16 EDF foamie, which as you can see is painted black on the bottom. Despite being small and fast, it’s easy to see, and distinguish top from bottom, even at a distance. It’s painted with Daler & Rowney acrylic, which is available in art & craft shops. I’ve used the same range of paints on a number of EPP and Depron models without any problems.

Also a little late. The Beaufort Model Flying Club in north Bristol. Weather not the best for us, with rain threatening, and a bad wind direction for our field. We got 26 airborne at the final count though.

Weather not great in Bristol area, but rain held off long enough for us to get 28 in the air. No mid airs, but a couple temporarily lost in outfields.

The weather is not lookng good for tomorrow's flights, with most forecasts showing the remains of the overnight rain that's coming, to still be around at midday. Are there any contingency plans to do it on a different day if we all get rained off?

All speed controllers are different. I have some which won’t arm if I’ve accidentally left the throttle kill switch in the ‘kill’ position on the Tx when powering the model up, and some that aren’t bothered and arm anyway.

Sounds like you need to do a throttle calibration on the ESC. For most ESCs you need to set the throttle stick on the transmitter to wide open (100%), then power up the model and wait for a couple of beeps from the ESC before closing the throttle. This tells the speed controller what PWM pulse widths to expect from the receiver as the top & bottom ends of throttle. Check on your Tx as well by using the channel monitor in the menu, that the throttle is moving between 0% and 100% as you move the stick up and down, and that you haven’t got any strange throttle curves programmed in.

I have this one, which I bought from 4-Max about 4 years ago. It’s OK except that mine has developed a couple of faults. One of the two fans has developed noisy bearings, which grumble for the first few minutes of charging until everything warms up. Cheap sleeve bearings I guess. One of the channels won’t correctly charge any battery over 2S now. The same channel will not do internal lipo resistance readings on anything more than a 2S pack - a different symptom of the same fault in the channel I suspect. So not the most reliable of units, although still in regular use as my main charger.

So time to start practicing that knife edge then, if the model will handle it. That’ll get you using the rudder.

Warm ethylene glycol antifreeze is good for cleaning castor oil stains off engines and exhausts. I read it somewhere (maybe on this esteemed forum, previous post excepted), tried it, and found it works a treat with a bit of scrubbing with an old toothbrush, where no other solvent or cleaning fluid would. I’ve got several engines sparkling again with this method now, but you do have to be careful, as ethylene glycol is flammable and gives off toxic fumes when heated, so do it outside.

I've been selling off a number of old modelling items on eBay over the last few months on behalf of our club, with the proceeds going to charity. Someone recently gave me a dozen or so assorted 35MHz Futaba receivers, and a variety of Tx/Rx crystals to try and sell. To my amazement most of them have now sold to people all over the UK. Which begs the question, how many people still fly on 35MHz? Most in our club are exclusively on 2.4GHz (we did away with our peg board years ago), and of my 20 or so models only one is still on 35MHz.

We have strict rules about model handling in our club, for both IC and electric models. Both types must be retrained with a crutch or peg of some kind, and cannot be started (or battery connected) until out on the flight line, i.e. not in the pits. Once an IC engine is running, the user must go behind the prop to make any adjustments etc. If possible, batteries must be fitted (or at least connected) from behind, with the model already restrained. Anyone not observing these rules is quickly jumped on by 'the management'. The only exceptions tend to be small EDF models, which we do sometimes connect up with the model on our lap while sitting in our chairs in the pits. However the rogue prop catching you out isn't really an issue with these. Several years ago, I changed the engine kill/gear switch on my DX8 to an 'aerospace' style locking toggle switch, which can only be operated by deliberately pulling it upwards first. Obviously the most likely failure with this arrangement, is that I still have to make sure the throttle is closed before I operate it. So far (touch wood!), it's never happened.

If anyone is in any doubt over how we ended up in this situation in the first place, can I suggest they watch 'Article 16 & model aircraft and drone flying from 1st January 2021 with BMFA CEO David Phipps' on YouTube here. Specifically the part between 57:30 and around 1:05:45 where ex-CAA employee Cliff Whittaker explains the background, which dates back to 2001, and had nothing to do with model fliers.

I did wonder at first if he was just completely unaware that there are any rules. I think he is, but he's just not (or wasn't) bothered. I think the clue's in the name he operates under, 'Lone Wolf Films'. He obviously sees himself as a bit of a maveric, and the rules the rest of us abide by don't apply to him.

Seems to me that HK have had their day as far as we in the UK are concerned. Shame, because some of their stuff was good value. Same applies to Banggood, their prices are now much higher than they ever used to be.

Just coming in to land my MPX 330S this afternoon, and ended up getting chased by a large dog (the model, not me)! The dog was clearly determined to get hold of the model, as in abandoning the landing to go around, said dog continued to follow the low flying model around the field. Catch 22, I had to land as my timer had sounded and I knew I would be low on battery, and yet I didn't know what the dog would do to the model once on the ground. After much shouting from me the dog was captured, and somewhat unsettled, I made a hasty and rather inelegant landing - fortunately with no damage. Apparently the dog owner did apologise to club members nearby, although I didn't hear them. First time in over 20 years of flying that it's ever happened to me, but quite unnerving at the time!

Apart from Formula 1 ?.

My understanding is that if you have a receiver which also has one of the little satellite receivers on the end of a cable, you should ideally set the aerials so that they are in the X, Y and Z planes to each other; in other words one along the axis of the model, one across and one vertical if you have space. If you have no satellite, then at 90° to each other as Nigel says above.

Presumably they’re sold as Air bars in the USA then are they?

I’ve done this by making support blocks from 1/8” balsa to pin under the (false) leading edge and trailing edge of the wing every few inches during construction (see photo). This method has worked well for me on a number of occasions.