Nigel Heather

Posted by Chris Walby on 18/09/2018 07:12:40: Nigel, IMHO just take a step back, did you remove the U/C due to a hard landing? You stopped using massive drag and basically something had to break to dissipate that amount of energy! Glue it back together, add a little reinforcement and try not to add too much weight, 4mm nylon screws should be okay. A trainer foamie I had used 2.5 mm steel screws for that reason, easy to sheer off in the event of a accident, but easily replaced. Yes it was a short landing. It didn’t go in that hard or fast, had it covered another few yards it would have been a perfectly good landing. But a gust caught it and put it down short into unmown grass. I was expecting to find out t just up on its nose and surprised to find the mount broken and ripped out - but that is probably my lack of experience with foams. I need to check the size but the undercarriage is held on with small steel self tappers - they didn’t break, they didn’t even bend. This is why I am considering nylon fixings when I repair, leaning towards 4mm as I don’t want a repeat performance, but unsure whether that would be too small for nylon. Cheers, Nigel

Would 4mm nylon bolts be okay for fixing the undercarriage or should I go up to 5mm. I want to go with something that will shear rather than pull the mount out but not to break on perfectly good if a little hard landings.

Posted by Martin McIntosh on 17/09/2018 21:27:45: Nigel, they said that she had no previous experience or tuition I believe. I don`t know if you fly that sort of model but they can have some very nasty surprises in store, even for a very experienced pilot. Not exactly like Wot 4`s. Racing quads have virtually no stabilisation so a cup of tea is out of the question. Just to make sure I’m not talking BS I have just rewatched the parts with Magdalene in. First they say that she has 4 years quad experience, but true she has never flown fixed wing. She then flies a hurricane using FPV. I also notice that is the only flying that she does in the episode, I could not spot her in any of the later battle scenes, nor the guy with the affro - personally I think that was just for telling the story of green recruits for the TV programme. As for the complexity of quads you are quite correct. The freestyle and racing quads do not have much in the way of stabilisation. The lady who is the experienced flier introduces quads as having lots of stabilisation - true if you are talking about DJI Phantoms but not the little 5” freestyle quads. On sunday I wore a secondary set of goggles while a skilled pilot flew a quad around. God it was fast, and although you have a pilot’s eye view, the video can blur past very quickly and it was not that easy to keep my orientation. Cheers, Nigel   Edited By Nigel Heather on 17/09/2018 23:10:18

Posted by Martin McIntosh on 17/09/2018 20:03:13: OK, I recollected that it was a Spit. but what ever it was, it was a fantastic achievement. My attempts with FPV on a docile glider left much to be desired, never mind when I tried a quad. So you are agreeing, you need to be very skilled to fly an FPV freestyle or racing quad. So why is it such a surprise that she could do basic flights in a Hurricane or Spitfire after a little instruction and practice. Cheers, Nigel

Posted by John Lancaster 2 on 17/09/2018 19:40:19: I can confirm that Magdalena flying the Hurricane FPV, from take off to landing with goggles on, was no trick - she actually did that and it's not easy - so I think fantastic talent is probably a fair shout. I also hope we get the shooting tech made available widely - it is awesome fun and I'd be up for a couple of sets. I think the designer is acutely aware there may be a commercial opportunity there! Doesn't surprise me one bit. I watch some of the FPV pilots flying their freestyle and racing quads around the site and they are phenomenal. Razor sharp reflexes and absolute situational awareness. Basic flying with a foamy Hurricane will seem like slow motion by comparison. The mind shift they have to conquer is going from FPV to LOS but I've no doubt that would not take them long - plus I believe she was flying the Hurricane using FPV googles, at least to start with. Cheers, Nigel Edited By Nigel Heather on 17/09/2018 19:50:58

@Mike T Thanks for the suggestion - pretty much what I had in mind. Although not sure I will go as far as bridging the ply plates - but an interesting idea. Cheers, Nigel

Posted by Denis Watkins on 17/09/2018 12:23:06: The easier option Nigel, is a ply plate on the fuselage belly, covering as much area as the model offers Remount your undercarriage to the plate by your chosen method I suspect that would be best - make a new mounting plate - but how to fix it. Some pictures The part of the bracket that has snapped off. As you can see it has a cheek either side (the other one is still embedded in the fuselage). These cheeks sit in wells in the fuselage and a piece of ply pushes from the fuselage into the cheek. You can see the edge of the ply that has snapped off. The view from the plate - as you would see it on the bottom of the fuselage. As you can see the undercarriage mounting holes are both on this broken piece. The hole to the right is compromised and the break has gone part way through it. The bottom of the fuselage where the mounting plate slots in. On the left you can see the well where the broken piece would fit and on the right you can see the part of the mounting plate that is still embedded. This picture shows a close up of the size of the fuselage where the plate cheek has been ripped out. To the right you can see the broken edge of the ply plate. This final picture attempts to show how the ply plate works. Most of it is embedded in the fuselage. The hashed bit slots into mounting plate cheek. The plate is too long to be slid out to the back of the plane (to the right in this picture) - the only way it could be slid in and out is from the front. That would have to be accessed through the tiny battery bay and there is foam mouldings stopping it from moving forward. I can't see how you could get it out. I can only think that the ply plates are positioned most of the way when the fuselage is in half. Then the fuselage is joined, the mounting plate added and the ply plates pushed backwards where they lock in place. I cannot see any way of replacing the plates - and that would make sense because those parts are not available as spares. So what do you reckon - best I can think is to create a ply plate with wooden cheeks and to glue that into the wells in the fuselage. Have some captive nuts in the ply and use nylon bolts to mount the undercarriage. Does that sound reasonable? Cheers, Nigel

Thanks for the tips. Yes a bit of an eye opener about foam - but I don’t know why I am surprised. I’m sure the ply would pull out of the foam, but you just can’t get to it. Even if you coul get it out you would not be able to replace it because it is much longer than the mounting plate slot that is the only access. Also the assembly sequence must be, push the mount in, then slide the ply though the fuselage and the mount locking the mount in place. But I can see no way to acheive that with an assembled fuselage so can only imagine that you have to do it part way though assembly.

I’ve just returned to the hobby after many years to find the world has gone electric. To ease myself in I bought an acrowot foam-e. It has been up a few times and I have been largely impressed. But yesterday it suffered a mishap. I flew it even though my brain was telling me ithe conditions were too gusty but my heart was telling me that there wouldn’t be too many more opportunities this year. Anyway, I brought it in for what was goung to be a smooth landing but, just as it was approaching the mown strip a gust caught it and pushed it down short into the 4” grass. But it still went in flat, had it been a few yards on it would have been a lovely landing but it ended up on its nose. No problem, I thought, had a lot worse with my IC planes. But when I reached it I realised that the undercarriage had been ripped off and the prop snapped. Replacement prop already on the way - but how to repair the undercarriage. The plastic mount has been snapped and ripped out on one side, still in on the other. Looking at the design, there is a thin ply plate on each side which is ebedded in the fuselage and goes through the plastic mount. This plate on one side has snapped. I can see no way of removing/replacing the ply plate - I can think it can only be positioned at manufacturing when the fuselage is in pieces - might explain why there are no spares for this area either. So best I can do is as follows CA, epoxy or wood glue on the two halves of the plate and hope they mate up - you can’t see it once assembled so it is just fingers crossed. Uhu Por on the foam and plastic. CA or epoxy to glue the two halve of the plastic mounting plate together. Any other suggestions. I see that some people drill and tap the plate to using M5 nylon bolts to attach the undercarriage to the mounting plate rather than the steel self tappers supplued in the kit. Having seen the plate I can’t see that working for long. The plastic plate is no more than 1mm thick, but is thickened by circular bosses where the self tappers go in. But these bosses are 5mm in diameter so the guys who have drilled out to M5 will have removed all that material and just tapped into 1mm of plastic. You could get away with M3, maybe M4 nylon bolts but would they be man enough, or just shear off on good landings. Cheers, Nigel

Posted by Geoff Sleath on 17/09/2018 00:17:15: I've just watched episode 2 and, on the whole, enjoyed it but I was also surprised at how incompetent a lot of the flying was. I mean there was at least 3 pilots there who had no experience of flying fixed wing models at all and would have failed an 'A' certificate test comprehensively. It also seemed odd how may of the 110s had motor trouble and, as a result of (presumably) asymetric thrust spun in. I wonder if they were properly built and checked before flying. They can't be that bad. I've never had a serious (ie catastrophic) failure of a brushless motor in many, many hours of flying electric models. I was rather sad at the attrition rate of perfectly good models. Still I'll certainly watch the next (last?) episode. Geoff The programmed mentioned this as a deliberate act to simulate new pilots turning up with barely any flying hours. The new pilots had one or more years flying FPV Quadcopters under their wings - so the programme makers were comparing this with green pilots that had dine some flying but barely anything on performance warplanes like the Spitfire and Hurricane. The Bf-110 - I suspect that was a design error - I can’t see what the guys assembling it could have done wrong. In these cits the motors and ESCs are already in place - really just a matter of plugging the servo wire into the receiver. The fact that it was the port motor in each case and the starboard one was fine smells of manufacturing error to me. It did puzzle me that so many aircraft crashed in the final battle once they had been ‘hit’ and the smoke triggered.  I don’t beleive the pilots were that bad, I suspect this was under instruction from the programme makers to make the action more exciting for the viewers.  I know we look at it as a waste but in the big picture of TV production the cost of those kits would be trivial. Cheers, Nigel Edited By Nigel Heather on 17/09/2018 10:21:41 Edited By Nigel Heather on 17/09/2018 10:24:16 Edited By Nigel Heather on 17/09/2018 10:25:02

Posted by Allan Bennett on 12/09/2018 19:56:41: I'm not sure where HK comes into the equation: You said you bought from Amazon, so you can return to Amazon for a full refund if it's not what you expected. I've done that in the past, with no problem even though it was my fault for ordering the wrong thing. Just go to 'Your orders' on their web site, select the transaction in question, and you should see a click-button for 'Return or Replace Items'. I was aware already, but confirmed in a BBC news article this morning - over half the items sold through Amazon are by third party sellers. In those cases Amazon require you to deal with the seller to resolve issues. To protect their reputation, Amazon will step in if the seller has done something wrong and is not playing ball, but in cases like this I’m afraid they will say “contact the seller and arrange a return”. Of course a return to HK is not goung to be realistic. Best the OP could do is see whether the seller would be nice and send on the electrics pack for a reasonable additional charge.

Bit of a set back. Took it down to the field and flew even though I thought the wind conditions were a bit gusty. Sure enough the plane flew okay but was getting blown around a bit. So brought it into the land and on approach a gust pushed it down early into the uncut grass. Thought it had landed okay but had ripped the undercarriage mount out of the foam. Also broke the prop. So needs a bit of gluing but nothing too serious - replace the prop which is no bad thing because the one in the kit flexes a lot. Cheers, Nigel

Checked the actual down trim - although 14 clicks it is only between 1.5mm and 2.0mm deflection in real terms.

Thanks for the replies and apologies for the confusion caused for the way I described the trim applied. So in summary With all surfaces set to neutral, the plane climbs under power, shallow climb with minimal power, gets steeper with more power, but not ballooning. Applied 14 clicks of down trim (now using correct terminology) and that has resolved the climbing and the plane flies very nicely (although not tried inverted or any aerobatics yet). So I could just leave it at that. But as I said in my first post, intrigued to know the cause and resolve it if possible. I will try the dive tests. And fair point about the 14 clicks - is that a lot - depends on the radio I guess - will look at the plane today and report back with the actual deflection of the elevator. Cheers, Nigel

I don’t think CoG is an issue.  It is balanced at 75mm exactly as per the instructions and once the climb is trimmed out it behaves very nicely. A nose heavy plane would resist climbing.  And it doesn’t have any of the nasty vices of a tail heavy plane. Cheers, Nigel Edited By Nigel Heather on 14/09/2018 15:10:33

Posted by PatMc on 14/09/2018 11:52:52: Assuming that, as IanR mentioned, you mean you solved the problem with down trim then it sounds as if it's simply nose heavy. Try moving the cg back in small increments test flying, at each change, to check that elevator doesn't become too sensitive. Or without moving the cg try flying inverted with & see what trim change is required to fly S&L as power is increased. If up (in the normal upright flying sense) then it would confirm that it's nose heavy. It is quite possible that the problem can't be cured by moving the cg far enough back & still remain flyable in which case I'd try the Tx mix of down trim with increased power as suggested by JD8. If your Tx has the facility use a small time delay (about 0.25 - 0.5 second) between throttle opening & trim action or be ready for the down trim to take effect before the power increase does, especially on low passes. Can’t see it being nose heavy, surely that would cause it to dive rather than climb. Think it is a terminology issue - when I said up trim, I meant that I pushed the uppermost trim button, like pushing the stick up. So when I said UP I’m referring to the stick input rather than what happens to the nose. Cheers, Nigel

    Posted by IanR on 14/09/2018 10:49:14: Nigel I had exactly the same problem - it was so bad that I gave up on it. When you say you solved the issue with 14 clicks of up trim, did you really mean down trim? Ian Think just different terminology for the same thing. I’m expressing it as I have to move the stick up to level the flight, so I have to click the upper of the two trim buttons. So I am moving the elevator stick (trim button) up to push the nose down. Will do some more experiments over the weekend weather permitting. Cheers, Nigel Edited By Nigel Heather on 14/09/2018 11:46:45 Edited By Nigel Heather on 14/09/2018 11:47:11 Edited By Nigel Heather on 14/09/2018 11:48:07

Posted by Josip Vrandecic -Mes on 14/09/2018 10:23:08: Hi Nigel , it's always what looks impossible to change... and it's a thrust line. There must be a way and if you can not, call a colleague from the club ... someone will know how to set the motor to -2 dgrs down and 2 dgrs right ... aprox. All the best and good flight. Note:Of course this is just my opinion. When I say the thrust line cannot be changed - what I mean is that the motor is attached to a metal bracket that is sandwiched between the two halves of the foam fuselage when it is assemble in China. There is no way of getting at it other than cutting the fuselage in half. I guess you could try and put washers between the mount and the motor but that would be pretty trucky to do. I’ve also read that the thrust line wanders over time - so maybe I just have to accept that as a limitation of this type of foam design. Looking at my model there is definite right thrust but no discernable up or down thrust. Is there a way of testing whether it is thustline or CoG?

Firstly, let me say that I have the plane flying nicely, this is just a minor niggle that I would like to understand and sort out if possible. This is an Acrowot Foam-e. Maidened yesterday, extremely well behaved, not as fast as I thought it might me. the one issue, which I have addressed at the moment with 14 clicks of up elevator is that with neutral elevator it would climb under the slightest power - a steady climb not a ballooning. So what might be the cause and what (if anything) can I do about it. My thoughts Tail Heavy - CoG is at 75mm as per instructions. Besides it is very behaved otherwise. Only thing is that there is some online debate as UK (Ripmax) Acrowot specifies 75mm and the US (Flyzone) Acrowot specifies 62mm Incidence - either wing or tailplane, but they are both properly seated. Thrust line - the mount is embedded in the foam so not much I can do about that Feature - maybe all acrowot foam-e models do this. Are there any flight tests that I can do to identify the cause? Cheers, Nigel

Managed to maiden yesterday evening. Decided to leave the throws as they were ELE - 19mm AIL - 16mm RUD - 45mm I arbitrarily set rates to 50% on all so it wouldn't be too wild on the first flights. Flew very nicely and in fact, part way through I realised that I had knocked the rate switch when fitting the battery so was flying on full throws all the time. Very well behaved apart from a tendency to climb up even the slightest power which took 14 clicks of up elevator to sort out Edited By Nigel Heather on 14/09/2018 09:56:53