Brian Stevenson 1

Posted by SIMON CRAGG on 21/10/2019 20:00:48: which can be set anywhere between 8 and 16 HZ. I have absolutely no idea what to set it at! Can anybody help please?.   Set it at 16. And it's KHZ, not HZ. Its maximum switching rate of 16 KHZ is low by modern standards. Is it quite an old controller? Why I ask is that  with a low switching rate and lots of poles in the motor (a typical outrunner) at high RPM (high throttle)  it may not work at all - the motor will just 'judder' or worse, as you don't notice it, the efficiency at full throttle or near full throttle  and thus the flight duration, will go down. Don't worry too much about this if you are flying an 'ordinary' plane. But you can run into this problem with pylon racers, hotliners, and EDFs, where RPM tends to be high. Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 22/10/2019 07:03:10 Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 22/10/2019 07:04:45

Posted by Steve J on 21/10/2019 22:48:06: Posted by cymaz on 21/10/2019 22:31:05: At least Mr Shapps seems to have got the message and the lobbying. Grant Shapps was an ally who wants to reform the CAA long before he became SoS. That is why it is such a stroke of luck that he became SoS. Steve Individually these fees are quite low. But when you consider all the routine stuff you have to pay for it all adds up. BMFA?: I'm in it because I think it does some good, and I suppose because there is some shared 'common companionable interest' in it. Even though I have zero interest in "I can fly my toy plane better than you can fly your toy plane" competitions so don't use that function. And as a 'country' member I don't even get a vote on anything despite paying the same subscription as everyone else. And the only two letters/emails I ever sent them weren't answered. But I don't actually NEED the insurance as my house insurance covers model flying for ALL occupants of the house. As do many policies. And then there is the 'A' test. Despite the BMFA insisting that it is merely 'personal achievement' and was never intended as any kind of licence, many 'Adolf' style clubs insist on it and so does the CAA if you want to avoid the test. (Though why you should want to avoid the CAA test for anything other than 'freedom' opinions is not clear to me.) So I don't think I shall renew my BMFA membership, despite being in it since long before it changed its 'trading' name from SMAE to BMFA. There are times when one has to make a personal stand on this stuff, even though that stand will go unnoticed. And re the 'height' concession I can't tell the difference between 400 feet and a 1000 feet when looking straight up and neither can the local plod, who don't even know the size of the object they are looking at until it lands.

Posted by Dickw on 21/10/2019 21:34:28: Posted by Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 20:50:34: So: BMFA members don't have to register until end January 2020. Good. So if I renew membership on 1st January, as usual, they presumably won't take the fee as I won't have passed the test by then so can't register at that time. What happens when I do take the test? I notice that the free 'pilot' registration has vanished. ..................................... Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 20:54:11 The free pilot registration has not vanished, it is still there if you don't hold an acceptable alternative such as a BMFA 'A' cert: - "Anyone flying a drone or unmanned aircraft (including model aircraft) weighing between 250g and 20kg will need to take and pass an online education package. This is free and renewable every three years." This seems to be completely separate from the £9 registration as an operator which can be either direct with the CAA system or via the BMFA or other 'approved Association' :- "With permission, the associations will collect the registration fee from members directly……" "The associations will issue further detailed guidance to their members in due course." Note the "with permission". Dick     The test is free, the registration isn't. And there is NO mention of the previously mentioned free 'Pilot'  registration any longer, only 'Operators' are mentioned. . The 3 year renewal is an extra cost. I hold full size pilots licence (since 1976) and a driving licence since around 1962). The pilot one NEVER has to be renewed unless you let it lapse by not flying a minimum number of hours every year. Driving licence is only at 70 years old, renewal is free, and there is no test. So this toy plane one is tougher on both repeating renewal and repeating fee than real planes and cars/motorcycles. Which is dopey. Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 22:44:22

Posted by Christopher Morris 2 on 21/10/2019 19:30:02: Presumably i am also best to charge the 2 battery's separately & not wile in series .     Yes, you can't put them in series when you only have a 6 cell charger. And of course charging them separately will take twice as long..   Two solutions. A) Buy a 'parallel charging' board. You can get one from Overlander and there are other places too. B) Make sure they are equally discharged (as you are flying them together in series they will be, roughly). Then: Make up a 'parallel Y lead' and charge them together forgetting the balancing. You don't actually NEED to balance them every time you charge, every 10 or 20 charges will do. The charging 'protocol' is such that the charge tapers off gradually at the end and this will tend to roughly balance them, as the 'internal resistance' of each individual cell increases as the voltage reaches a maximum, so fuller ones will get less current anyway. I went two years (at least a hundred flights/charges) without balancing some at all, ever. And they are still fine. If you do this DON'T charge at more than a '2C' rate, though a '1.5C' or '1C' rate is better but not essenrial. Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 22:21:08 Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 22:22:14 Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 22:23:57

That's nice. Is it the Chris Golds one? Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 21:50:13

So: BMFA members don't have to register until end January 2020. Good. So if I renew membership on 1st January, as usual, they presumably won't take the fee as I won't have passed the test by then so can't register at that time. What happens when I do take the test? I notice that the free 'pilot' registration has vanished. Yeah, the gubmint doesn't like giving us free stuff. So what they giveth with one hand (£7.50) they taketh away with the other. And that is assuming that NOT charging me £7.50 is 'giving' me something. Am I a real aeromodeller by Chris Berry's criteria? Probably not. Despite have made my first 'built up' model (a 26 inch span Skyleada Auster) in 1956 at age eleven, and designed and built hundreds of models since, I did buy a ARTF in 2001 (The 90 size Great Planes Cosmic Wind Little Tony) which I still play with sometimes. Only ever the one ARTF but by his standards that probably makes me a fail.   Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 20:54:11

Posted by Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 10:19:57: Posted by Peter Miller on 10/08/2019 08:24:49: So many aircraft...So little time!! If you could see my list of aircraft that I would like to build but just do not have the energy or patience, For example, the Waco Taperwing has been on my list for about 45 years!! It's hard to think up new scale designs. I do most of my own and even then it takes ages to decide. And as for non-scale 'sports' models it's even harder. It must be even more difficult if you are doing it for a public audience. Me? Recently a Juri Sirotkin 'Spacehound' 1963 World champion control line stunt model enlarged and modified (slightly longer tail moment) for RC. A very complicated model, which I made more complicated by making the exhaust and silencer totally internal. And I had to use old 'B Team Race' technigues to mount/cowl the inverted OS 91FS pumped so I could keep the fuselage characteristically narrow. Then I had to mould the distinctive 'backwards streamlined' canopy and find a dummy 'Russian Cosmonaut' to put inside. Was it worth it? No, in the air all black and white (the colours of the original) aerobatic models look the same. Then a Mercury Aeronca Sedan for some light relief. Now I'm thinking "Does the world really need another Howard Ike or another overweight 120mm EDF Super Sabre? (I've got all the works so only the airframe has to be built, and more important, paid for.)

  Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 10:35:17 Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 10:36:19

Posted by Steve J on 21/10/2019 08:26:41: Brian, All the points that you raise have be discussed before. I suggest that you read this topic and the commons committee one. Steve I know they have. But like any 'controversial' subject with limited options they keep getting 'refreshed' with new people commenting. Whatever we post won't make any difference. The authorities won't pay any attention to this forum and nor will most model flyers, the vast majority of whom don't subscribe to this forum and have probably never looked at it.

Posted by Martin Harris on 21/10/2019 01:49:55: Posted by Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 00:25:47: I think comparisons with driving and pilots licences are a little 'over the top' just to fly a toy plane. This is a problem with 'officialdom', not you or me personally. Exactly. If pre-qualification is not required for them, why [if it was ever the intention] would there be any sense in requiring it for little Johnny who wants to have a go on the buddy box. This is the sort of thing that I confidently expect the BMFA [who contrary to opinion in some quarters, I believe to have already demonstrated their effectiveness] to clarify and resolve with the CAA etc. The intention is probably to discourage any kind of 'hobby' flying' ('They' have been doing that in the full-size flying world for longer than I can remember.) There we were, the CAA and ourselves Both perfectly happy and rarely interacting with each other except for the minor nuisance (to the CAA) of some self-styled 'governing body'' of a small proportion of toy plane flyers sometimes asking them questions to which they had to think up polite answers in the hope they would go away, which they mostly did. Then along came 'drones'. Devices requiring zero or very little skill (thus likely a short-term interest) with which people with what are now called 'learning difficulties', bored with their yo-yo's (to give an historical example) skateboards and rubik cubes, can take blurred and shaky videos of places in which few people, often including the operators themselves, have any interest. These things are intrusive, make an irritating noise, often in highly populated areas, and are a minor danger to aviation. Hopefully for everyone except their operators, tey will turn out to be a 'fad' and will mostly disappear of their own account. but nevertheless the government 'how can we be seen to be doing something? process comes into action. And we toy plane flyers are caught up in it. Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 08:20:19 Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 08:21:27

Posted by Martin Harris on 20/10/2019 23:35:25: There are many questions and very few authoritative answers so rather than speculating, I'm happy to wait for advice from the BMFA once negotiations/discussions with the CAA and Government and the deadline is reached. It seems logical that a registered pilot in command with a buddy box system should be able to hand control to a beginner in the same way that an instructor supervises a student pilot, learner driver etc. who does not possess their own full licence - I think I'm right that the theory test is not a pre-requisite to taking practical driving lessons and PPL students certainly take written tests well into their training programme. Hopefully some pragmatic thinking will get this clarified as details of the application of the legislation progresses. In the case of the club trainer, any registered operator can affix their number and allow other members to pilot the model. In the case of general unwillingness to take that responsibility then all it should take is a stick on label with the current instructor's own number to be affixed during operation. I do wonder if there seems to be a lack of uptake, whether the CAA might conduct spot checks - probably at clubs or popular flying sites - in order to produce some high profile prosecutions to encourage compliance!   Edited By Martin Harris on 20/10/2019 23:38:23 I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the BMFA. While you are probably in it, and I certainly am, I suspect there are far more flyers NOT in the BMFA then there are in it. As many home insurance policies cover model flying and also cover everyone who lives in the house, not just a 'named' owner or even just family members, many flyers have no reason to join the BMFA except for the competitions the BMFS provides. . And there are far more non-competitive flyers than competitive ones. OTOH if the BMFA can negotiate genuinely worthwhile concessions there may well be a surge in BMFA membership. I think comparisons with driving and pilots licences are a little 'over the top' just to fly a toy plane. This is a  problem with 'officialdom', not you or me personally. Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 00:32:30 Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 21/10/2019 00:33:08

Posted by Kelly on 20/10/2019 21:08:14: If my club registers then I will comply for the sake of my club. If I have to register as an individual then I will leave my club and free fly as I did for several years. I am making a stand . This is a hobby with a very good safety record. People who buy drones and fly them near airports, main roads, smuggling goods into prison and so on are not going to register so how do we who on the whole fly with safety in mind ,insurance and obey air laws be forced to register when so called drones have been around for 10 years or so without causing any loss of life due to an air strike etc. The Police have a lot more to deal with than someone with a toy aircraft, although you can get arrested for raising your voice to your wife (ask me how I know). So bring it on you sad little PC law makers   Clubs don't register, only individuals do. Which raises a couple of interesting points: A) If the club has any 'club trainers' some individual, maybe a committee member, will have to 'own' them, pass the online test (which he might well have done already when this comes into effect), and register as an 'operator', paying the fee, maybe refunded to him out of club funds. B) And someone, never having flown before, WILL FIRST HAVE TO PASS THE ONLINE TEST, probably having never even touched a plane, and register as either an operator or pilot. And  that of course assumes that he knows such regulations exist - I don't see any effort to publicise it outside of model flying circles. And the shops, brick or online,  won't as they don't want to lose a sale by putting such obstacles in the buyers way. Where we fly you don't need to have any 'skills' at all, just insurance. And there is no formal supervision of anyone, though the more public-spirited of us (assuming such a person is actually there) may offer some informal assistance (which a surprising number of total beginners, turning up with their purchased online foam Spitfire, resent). Most of us learnt by trial and error, probably not there. The concept of 'training' didn't exist when I started. As for you leaving your club, if the club insists on everyone registering and 'polices' it (which is against BMFA guideless) you have a choice, register or leave the club. But sensible clubs will obey the BMFA guidelines and not 'police' it at all. I don't see a majority of clubs approaching the BMFA saying "We WANT to police it, so alter the guidelines". Some may of course, but guidelines of course are just that, quidelines, they don't have to be obeyed. Will the police themselves police it? Maybe at first they will, as it is much easier than catching burglars, but their enthusiasm will probably fade away after a short time as this registration does NOTHING to help catch any malevolent flyers. It is just a "look, we are doing something" exercise for public consumption. Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 20/10/2019 22:51:55 Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 20/10/2019 22:53:42

Posted by tigerman on 20/10/2019 12:32:18: I have a Laser 80 spare now, just lost the top wing on my old Wots wot in flight and it is really old now and needs replacing ,not worth trying to repair it . Seagull Models have just brought out a 90 inch L-4 Grasshopper .It's flying weight is meant to be 6 Kilos and it is for a 15cc to 20cc petrol engine (horrible things these petrol engines ) Going by my calculation if it is for a 15cc/20cc petrol engine a Laser 80 should be OK but I I find sometimes the manafactures recommendation are not that great .I find it is best to check .Anyone help me out on this combination a Laser 80 in a Seagull 6 Kilo L-4 Grasshopper .I do not want to fork out £350 only to find the Laser 80 is not the right engine for this model Failing that I do not really want to buy another Wots Wot but that will be my second choice . 80 four stroke in a 6 Kilo light aircraft? From my OS 56 powered 84 inch 4.5 Kilo Airsail Auster AOP9 experience you will REALLY have to fly it in a 'full-size' manner, particularly on take off, even from a concrete surface. GENTLY is the word. I have been flying full size aircraft of similar type since the 1970's and I still find the Airsail tricky. It's quite rewarding as you always have to fly it in a scale manner, 100% of the time. These are draggy aircraft and can slow down very quickly, and applying the limited  power of such engines in such a size/weight of model  takes some time to have an effect - you don't always have space to put the nose down. But it can get a bit dull after a while. Greater power NEVER does any harm and will get you out of 'situations' if you mess up. So why bother? PS: My choice for the Grasshopper would be the 160 (not the 120) OS Gemini twin. But then you are talking £1100 plus total. Will you get five  times the pleasure of an OS25 two stroke powered  Junior 60? Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 20/10/2019 13:56:12 Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 20/10/2019 13:57:46 Edited By Brian Stevenson 1 on 20/10/2019 14:14:58

Posted by Ron Gray on 20/10/2019 07:37:15: Thanks for the replies guys. On all of my other leccy ‘planes, I use Velcro to both stop batteries sliding with Velcro stuck to both battery and tray plus Velcro straps around the batteries. This works fine including on my F3a. But, all of these have good access to the batteries and all of them have batteries that are horizontal on a battery tray. The new model is different in the the batteries will be mounted vertically plus there is no access to the side of the batteries only the end. Yes they will slide into a ply housing / box to locate them but I’m not too sure that a Velcro overlapping strap with a max of 30mm lap will be sufficient, plus it may well be difficult to get fingers into the cowl to undo the Velcro. By the way, the access hatch is roughly the size of the cross section of the batteries. A simpler way is just to make a strong hatch with a strong surround. Maybe which is attached to the firewall/other structure rather than the cowl. Just cut out the matching part of the cowl and glue it to the hatch.. For a hatch catch just use a spring loaded sliding piano wire pin, equally strongly attached. (You can no longer get the Flair ones and they were a bit weak anyway, but they are simple enough to make.) Despite my long post about Velcro that is what I mainly do now and it has never failed. It really doesn't matter if the battery rattles up and down a little. If it bothers you put a bit of soft foam on the back of the hatch.

Posted by GONZO on 20/10/2019 07:38:51: …….and as a nod to the modern atomic age one of the nuclear war disaster films; Threads, The Day After etc for when I just want to see large mushroom clouds and massive destruction. Edited By GONZO on 20/10/2019 07:40:42 The Day After was a good film. Made for TV apparently. And an interesting factual error. The BMW R65 motorbike belonging to one of the main characters never had electronic ignition anytime in its (short) production life (I know, I had one) and most of the cars wouldn't have either. So they would not have been affected by the EMP of the bombs. Thus the huge numbers of people stuck in non-operational cars (which was a significant part of the film) would not have happened.