Jim Hearnden 1

Having visited a few clubs in the USA which is I suspect the bigger market, around 50% were electric. But they were in the middle of nowhere so no one cared how much noise they make. That I suppose is where the silencer design derives from. Years OK when I lived in Basingstoke I had unsilenced 049s, several diesels & worst of all a Super Tigre G15 FI. That was propped for 21,000RPM on a 7 x 6. Never had any complaints, I went back to where we flew recently & its now surrounded by housing. Would I get away with that now, NEVER! I suspect people are less tolerant of noise intrusion. Having said that I still have a few glows in my collection & a couple of desesals. Will I fly them in future Oh yes.

Funnily enough working for a USA company, sprinklers are everywhere in the USA including data centres. Umm not keen but Halon has been illegal since 1999 & gas suppression systems can cause disk damage as well as needing clean up. There is a fire suppression system available for data centres that uses a very, very fine mist, as others have said to remove heat. I understand a similar system to that used on his majesties ships especially in weapons areas. I am told this is none-survivable due to the water effectively drowning you. I am not keen on gas suppression systems as A. they are finite, once you've exhausted the gas there is no more, so if the fire persists then you're in schtuk. B. the noise of gas systems going off is enough to damage disk drives, less of an issue they are now not rotating media but still an issue. C. the bottles are heavy, bulky & expensive. One system that does work is reduced oxygen which lowers the oxygen level to a point where it won't support fire.

I design data centres as a living, apparently the power in 2016 for LHR was 55MW. Yes it could be generated but the Greenies would be very excited as it would need test every month or so. I put data centres in hospitals & most have only a single grid feed. They do have diesel generation & we put modular UPS on them as well. I am ex-RAE apprentice & just down the road was the NGTE (National Gas Turbine Establishment) ex-Sir FRank Whittle. Hence when we were in 3 day week we carried on working as we were running on their facility. It also ran the big wind tunnel as there was not enough power in Farnborough without it. It was a unique event, the HV transformer caught fire & then took out its backup because the water sprinkler system didn't start. From someone who knows "So what went wrong? Looking at it, the two transformers that can feed the DNO sub that feeds the local sub that feeds Heathrow do not have a firewall and instead have a sprinkler system installed. One caught fire (a rare event) and the sprinkler system (which is fed from one of two diesel fired water pumps in duty/standby set up) failed to either work or be effective. As a result, either damage occurred to the adjacent transformer or it was de-energised for the fire brigade to fight the fire, or both. What should have happened is that the fire should have been suppressed and the second transformer should have kept running. This is why I really don’t like having transformers without a fire wall with a blast rating, sprinklers are an active system and don’t always survive the initial failure."

Err it wasn't a single point of failure, the sub station caught fire & its backup failed. There are actually 3 rings supplying LHR only one failed. The problem is LHR uses more power than a medium size town. You can provide back up with generators but they'll sit unused apart from testing for years. To cover every major airport in the UK would cost an absolute fortune and all to cover a very rare incident.

When I had my sectional garage installed which is 22 x 11 feet. My coz & I divided the end space (around 5Ft) by putting in 2 x 2 studs off the roof frame and a 2 x 2 horizontal on the floor. Rather than plaster board which hates damp, I used flooring grade sealed 18mm chipboard. We painted the garage side white to brighten up the work area & then built a bench in front of it. The partition is absolutely bomb proof. I run a dehumidifier 24 x 7.

This is the way I have always done it. The servo sets the slow running, not the carb itself. Full slow trim & throttle stick stops the engine. High slow trim & low throttle stick is idle.

My guess would be a Dellow, wheels look early Ford so could be any of the Ford specials in period.

They've found the idiot drone pilot that hit the water bomber! https://abcnews.go.com/US/drone-operator-charged-hitting-super-scooper-plane-palisades/story?id=118313936#:~:text=Peter Akemann%2C 56%2C of Culver,federal prosecutors in Los Angeles

That's brilliant! Despite being a radio tech by training never learnt morse. And its a dying art these days.

Funnily enough last year I gave a presentation to my local Light Aircraft Assoc. Strut of which I am a member on the Martin Baker Aircraft which is what the company was originally started for.

Got home from indoor flying at Medway MMFC on Sunday, ordered some leads & Micro connectors. Arrived today by RM. Fantastic. Had good service from them before.

I keep suffering this with my Night Vapor. Now Steve Webb has gone he kept loads of bits. But I need a motor, ordered a replacement sometime ago, what came was slightly different but fitted the mount. It turns out the motor was the wrong one 😞 So no one has correct stocks. Someone lists in the USA but they want £12 odd post! Got lucky a while ago, Century models listed NV fuselages with electronics & motor/gearbox for £19.99 on E Bay. Bargain. I bought 2. One I've Xmas tree'd out for its RX/servo pack for my TY. It may loose its motor for my Night Vapor!

In fact Outerzone has a copy of the original Mercury / HJN instructions & that states that all wing ribs are the same. https://outerzone.co.uk/plan_details.asp?ID=5551

This is what Outerzone has to say in relation to the BB Kit. The kit supplied to us was not exactly a pre-production one, but it was from the first batch of kits. One or two niggles were brought to the notice of the manufacturer, these being wrong sections on the trailing edge stock and centre ribs that didn't fit - plus the awful aforementioned aluminium motor plate! As I write, Colin Buckle has these items in hand. Whatever you do, please don't be tempted to reduce the dihedral and fit ailerons, as you'll ruin the essential character of this vintage(ish) gem."

Did you read the report. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/602bb22f8fa8f50388f9f000/Alauda_Airspeeder_Mk_II_UAS_reg_na_03-21.pdf It couldn't have flown under BMFA rules as it would have been classified as a Large Model > 25kg. It actually weighed 95kG and was flying under CAA authorisation with CAA personnel observing it. And yet they make us jump through hoops flying anything over 250grams! The build looks like it was done by a teenager & any Aeromodeller would have known it wasn't fit for purpose. I still say, we're obeying the rules but the ones likely to create the issue are not. And anything the CAA touches is a disaster. Gold plated rules (look what happened to EASA rules when we left the EU.