Martin Harris - Moderator

Do the last few posts infer that model flying is a sport and aeromodelling is a hobby? I would suggest that almost all of us are model flyers and many of us are aeromodellers. We have had several enthusiastic members over the years with little or no interest/aptitude for piloting their models but who have contributed greatly to the atmosphere of the club. Personally, I would welcome both the sporting enthusiast and hobbyist at my club.

There’s a simple explanation for the apparent anomaly about hill soaring in stronger winds than a flat field flyer would find comfortable… The earth and a myriad of bits attached to it, trees, buildings, buses, hedges etc. etc. gets in the way of the moving mass of air that we call wind and makes it tetchy as it scuffs across the ground and hits these obstructions, introducing tumbling air deflecting in various directions which the flat field flyer encounters at the most critical stages of a flight. The air approaching a typical slope has had a lovely smooth trip, way above the trials and tribulations of its lower layers and moves at a more or less constant speed and direction until it is deflected upwards by the slope. It doesn’t have time to get very grumpy until it’s realised that it’s past the top of the hill - at which time it can get very nasty indeed!

With a motorcycle and sidecar, it's quite an alien concept steering the bars while sitting on a bike if you're used to one. I did remember the advice to accelerate through left handers on my one encounter with an outfit (attached to an original RE Bullet) and ease off in right hand turns - although I appreciate that you really wouldn't want to do any front wheel braking! In fact, I once analysed my riding in relation to initiating the bank into a corner and was amazed to find that I was actually steering fractionally in the opposite direction to do so.

I have a feeling that by the mid 70s when I took an interest, a full motorcycle licence (or accompanying licenced driver) was a requirement to drive a sub 7 cwt three wheeled car. The Reliants only just squeezed in to this category by specifying the spare wheel as an optional extra!

Yes, the title (at least) is sacrosanct.

I’m not sure that it’s gone that far OT as its title refers to the TV programme which featured 3 wheelers and that’s sparked memories of related vehicles although as the OP Leccy, that may not have been your intent. If there’s a general feeling that it should be split, I can certainly do so…

Although Henry might have been on some sticks, it looked like there was some wireless buddying going on… A bit of serendipity on this thread too if it was a Mick Reeves 1/6 scale Hurricane (see one of my earlier posts).

I’ve just done a little research and destroyed a long held myth… I had understood that the Messerschmitt Tiger (4 wheeled 500cc version of the KR200) which was reputed to be capable of 80mph in forward and reverse) was in fact built by the successor of the company, FMR, and had a conventional 4 speed and reverse gearbox and could only do 78mph. At least my personal claim to the world speed record in a bubble car is intact - achieved on tow (using my Dad’s hosepipe as a rope) in a Trojan (right hand drive British built Heinkel) behind a friend’s tuned up Cortina while on the way to the scrappy. I was too busy trying to keep it between the road kerbs to watch the speedo as instability took over, while the Cortina driver thought I was messing around and continued to accelerate until at 80 mph he felt me dabbing the brakes while directly behind him in a vain attempt to break the tow or stabilise the situation!

That was the case at one time ED (and Eric) but was dropped in 1963. My Bond Bug had a lower centre of gravity than the Reliants that it was based on and it took me some effort to get it inverted but the downside of sitting on an inch or so of vinyl covered foam directly on the floor pan was that in slushy conditions the icy lumps from the road between the normal car ruts were thrown up and constantly drummed against the driver’s (and anyone brave enough to be a passenger’s) posterior.

I see you’ve got your landings off pat…

I mentioned the same thing so we should be ok….

Just for Geoff:

Yes please!

An indisputable fact based on personal experience! I suspect it was simply due to evolution from the original motorcycle based commercial vehicles produced by the Reliant company back in the 30s when it was first founded. Using 2 wheels at the back also helped distribute the load of course. The design changed to use an Austin 7 based engine (Austin later sold the tooling and rights to Reliant) and the later aluminium block OHV engines were often retrofitted to Austin 7 based vintage racing cars in later years.

I thought this was on a totally different subject! I’ve only ever heard them referred to as log tables. North/South divide?

That takes me back - when I started model flying, I was a motorcyclist and didn't see much future in trying to transport my models and kit on the pillion of my Bonneville... After relying on lifts from friends for a month or two (thanks to Brian Cooper of this forum in particular) and lacking a car licence, I invested in a Supervan III - famous as the choice of Trotter's Independent Trading. Unfortunately it fell over rather terminally one morning while avoiding a wayward Mini so I transferred the engine and transmission into a friend's spare saloon body. That fell over after hitting a deep puddle one particularly wet morning resulting in the loss of my unbreakable Lumpers trainer (which had survived the rigours of my training on Croxley Moor) to an assault from various tumbling tool boxes and other paraphernalia. I did repair it but soon "upgraded" to a Bond Bug. That fell over just after leaving the local model shop after a master cylinder malfunction but after rolling it back from its inverted resting place and letting the oil drain back into the sump, restarted and got me home to straighten out the squashed roof. Slightly embarrassing was when I collected a Mick Reeves Hurricane kit from a local dealer at our club night...and the box wouldn't fit in the passenger side! In later years, I progressed to a Scimitar which I thoroughly enjoyed for many thousands of miles over a couple of decades. There were two Reliant factories - one either side of the A5 in Tamworth so although the same company, I believe there was little daily connection between 3 and 4 wheel production - perhaps why the 3 wheel "team" made no mention of Scimitars?

Or a knock-off? I bought a second hand "classic" Panic which had built up wings - Avicraft confirmed it wasn't one of theirs...

Perhaps unusually, the only Boddo design I've owned or built was the DB Autogyro way back in the mid 70s. Sadly, by the time I started in 1/12th scale combat, he'd just finished so although I saw him at various events, I never had a conversation with him. I seem to recall making replacement blades on a regular basis!

Maybe better a mangled model than a mangled finger? I find the cavalier attitude of many flyers to connecting batteries with their hands through prop arcs or careless handling to be very concerning. Many of these say that "it's OK, I've got an isolating switch on my transmitter" which I won't argue is a wise precaution - but only as a secondary layer of protection over and above safe handling. It's so easy to either forget/misoperate a switch or knock one that their use shouldn't be relied on. Last year, I was casually advising a fellow member that he shouldn't really be connecting his battery with the model on a bench pointing into the pits area when another connected his battery either with the throttle open or knocked the stick. Either way, it leapt off the starting bench and into our safety fence...happily the miscreant and everyone else was adhering to club protocol and were behind the model.

Used Sinclair Microdrives IIRC

I would strongly advise against using it for that purpose though but I bet they’ve made a pile from it.

Full of emptiness...haven't heard anyone else use that expression since my old chemistry teacher at school...

Full size aircraft have almost universally adopted the D box and stressed skin as the lightest way to achieve adequate strength. It's a long time since external bracing wires were used to resist torsional loads!

I could have done, but where's the fun in that! Martin Harris....lu...8 ...anti-pedantry dept.

Got a problem with the E on your keyboard Ken? Martin Harris....lu...8 ...Keyboard Remote Fault Diagnostic Dept.