Richard Clark 2

I think the new Cockpit is a poor replacement for the much more versatile Evo/Royal Pro/Royal SX. However, the 16 channel black version of the Royal SX is still available, none of the others. But for how long I wonder? The Profi is totally discontinued, not that it was much of an advance on the Evo/Royal series.

Posted by Hayden Brown on 06/07/2020 23:29:58: I would like to know the better kitset to purchase for the Junior 60 electric version. There seems to be various comments on either Ben Buckle, Flair etc but is one much better than the other? Hayden Edited By Hayden Brown on 06/07/2020 23:42:26 The Ben Buckle one is the only kit still around, but ir's simple to make from a plan. You don't need the  special 'electric' version if you can't find it though BB do both. Just leave the IC engine mounting beams in place and modify the ply plate to suit. It has a very short nose. Put the battery right under the motor and keep all the radio, servos included, as far forward as you can to get the C of G right. They are lovely to fly and with the big wheels and steep dihedral very 'atmospheric' in flight Edited By Richard Clark 2 on 07/07/2020 06:46:21

Jeffrey, Don't forget it's supposed to be a real rocketship. These things went up in an incredibly fast vertical 'rotating on its axis' or tight spiral ciimb reaching several hundred feet in a few seconds. Junior 60's or Ladybirds they aren't. (At our site we have a few free flight enthusiasts who still build such things and it is still an active competition class.) That guy making the OZ comment about a 'reduced thrust' Mills 0.75 is losing the whole idea, though he does mention they sometimes used a Oliver Tiger 2.5 cc (though the ultimate would have been a Super Tigre G15 glow). The Gaucho is what we would call a 'hotliner' today. and a very hot one at that. You need about a 300-500 Watt motor to get the correct 'historical' (and still existant today) performance, it's the entire point of 'pylon' models.

Posted by RICHARD WILLS on 06/07/2020 15:54:19: The simple conclusion has to be , that you all want a small sporty model that is easy to live with .(thats one new thread ) Granville 'QED' in 'Conquistador del Cielo' paint scheme

Posted by Doc Marten on 06/07/2020 22:05:31: Actually, the duty on regular petrol is more like 80% not 50. It's 57.95 pence per litre. and there is 20% VAT on that. - a tax on a tax. I don't 'commute' and I've never noticed the actual price of petrol. I just put about 50 quid's worth in, which makes the needle go from red to about half full or fill it up if I'm going a long way. How far my car goes on that I haven't noticed either, it's just one of the many trials of life

Posted by flight1 on 06/07/2020 21:04:00: Posted by Richard Clark 2 on 06/07/2020 20:31:49: It's crazy expensive. Remember half the price of 'road vehicle' petrol from a petrol station is the duty and the VAT on that duty. Aspen isn't sold as a 'road vehicle' fuel so there's no duty and therefore no VAT on the duty. And basically it's just 'low sulphur' petrol with almost no additives so it's no big deal. A total ripoff. Not quite aspen is subject to 20% vat but no duty, and the actual usage cost compared to glow fuel is a lot less as the petrol engines use a lot less hence the cost per flight is much cheeper than a glow equivalent , plus you got to pay for quality you never now what you a re getting from the pump these days!! ohh1 and there is little or no mess bonus I know it's subject to 20% VAT on the 'end' price but my point is that the the end price doesn't have the approx 50% fuel duty in it. My local petrol station is ALL low sulphur fuel and the price is much the same as everyone elses (I've never heard of the name on the sign and the pumps but it all comes from the Esso refinery twelve miles down the road). This Aspen stuff is three times the price of road DUTIED fuel but has zero duty. . So six times the price of undutied fuel. If you are prepared to pay that price, fine, it's not as if we use much. I was just pointing out how high the price is.

Posted by Tim Kearsley on 06/07/2020 19:44:22: Thanks Richard. I hadn't thought of the possibility of a bad connection on the balance connector. I'm discharging the pack as I write, so we'll see how things progress. Tim. A bad contact is always a danger with balancing chargers. Bear in mind balancing doesn't need to be done every time. Balancing one in every ten charges is more than adequate. I've got two 3S 2200 25C batteries used several times a week in summer, never balanced them at all in three years and they are still fine. Much depends on how well the individual cells were matched before the pack was assembled. Inherently lithium batteries need no more balancing than lead acid, nicads, or nimh and nobody ever balances them. Its just the potential danger of over charging lithium cells that is the problem. (I recently replaced the 2 cell 1600 lipo inside a British made £400 Chord Mojo portable digital to analog 'hi-fi' converter. It's intended to be charged from near enough any USB charger (I mostly use the Apple iPhone charger) and it's not got any facility for balancing at all, so Chord, which is a very reputable company, think it's safe enough.)

It's crazy expensive. Remember half the price of 'road vehicle' petrol from a petrol station is the duty and the VAT on that duty. Aspen isn't sold as a 'road vehicle' fuel so there's no duty and therefore no VAT on the duty. And basically it's just 'low sulphur' petrol with almost no additives so it's no big deal. A total ripoff.

Posted by RICHARD WILLS on 06/07/2020 11:04:13: Erm........ sorry Chris and SW , I'm afraid we didnt get very far with the "choosing a plane concept " , but we might be able to offer you a Kylie Minogue android . If you're interested . (looks like its got a way to go yet, though). Preferably a blow-up one for portability. My car came with an electric pump for the tyres. Please send mine in a box that says "Barclays Bank - Addressee only"

Posted by Chris Walby on 06/07/2020 09:55:01: Richard and the boys Please add me to the list of anything I can fit a Laser into from 70 size upwards into, cheers Chris Erm.....Any plane of '70' size upwards, be it designed for glow, petrol, or electric. The propeller doesn't know what makes it go round .

Posted by Cuban8 on 06/07/2020 13:24:48: On the subject of oily and smelly diesel exhaust residues..............is there any reason why synthetic oil cannot replace the castor that all commercial diesel fuels seem to contain - and how about using a much more refined and cleaner burning lamp oil in the fuel that's advertised as a replacement for use in smelly old green house heaters running on paraffin? A fundamental engineering reason for sticking with the old familiar brew, or is it just a case of "we've always done it that way"? Edited By Cuban8 on 06/07/2020 13:25:27 Most 'synthetic' oils are not really synthetic, in way of being an 'artificial' lubricant. They are still made from crude oil, which comes out of the ground. But the crude oil, rather than being broken down to the required 'thinness' is broken down fully and then rebuilt, equals 'synthesised'.. As a result they don't mix well in the high ratios needed with the other constituents of diesel fuel. Which is why such fuels, if they use any at all, only use a small proportion, the rest being vegetable oil.

Posted by Peter Miller on 06/07/2020 08:28:43: I do see that ether is available on Ebay. Not sure if it is suitable for fuel mixing....I never mixed my own. It is a bit like acetone. For years I bought 500mil bottles from the chmists.Thenthey were not allowed tosell bigger than 50mil. When I looked on Ebay the first listing was for a gallon bottle!!! You can get it from high street chemists but they like to faff around making phone calls to 'head office' asking if its ok or not. And it's not usually in stock so you have to wait a few days, Shows? In 2020 what shows? And if they think I'm gong to pay a show entrance/parking fee so they can sell me things off the stalls they've got another think coming .

Posted by Robin Mosedale 1 on 05/07/2020 22:14:09: Ahh I realised a few minutes posting that I was mangling units. I was confused why Ripmax wre being so conservative. I'll probably obtain a couple of 40Cs but the existing stock will extend the number of flights. Many thanks again C ratings are almost never true anyway. So just buy the highest C rated battery you are prepared to pay for, it might give you some sort of 'margin'. Though there's not a lot of 'practical' difference between any of them.

Posted by Chris Dobson 2 on 06/07/2020 00:57:40: Does anyone still fly diesel (compression ign) engines much? If so, is the fuel available or is it mostly homebrew (and how difficult is diethyl ether to source)? In the 'old days' long before elf and safety the local large chemist shop chain used to sell 'anaesthetic ether' to us 12-15 year olds without question when we told them we made toy planes, It cost next to nothing if we brought our own gallon cans. The castor oil was more expensive, and they even sold amyl nitrate or nitrite. Nowadays one of those two is used in 'poppers' and is almost impossible to obtain legally, but the other might be easier. I can't remember which is which. Don't fall for the web ads selling it as it's very unlikely to be genuine. The diesel fuel suppliers use some inferior stuff but it'a good enough for most purposes. The nitrates/nitrites  are not essential anyway though they may help with throttling, which was not a requirement in the 'old days'. Paraffin was from the local petrol station. We mixed it in a bucket and poured it into whatever screw top bottles we had. (E D made a weird but ok diesel fuel that smelt of boot polish.) The traditional 'day to day' fuel was equal parts of all three plus a small splash of amyl nitrate or nitrite if you were team racing. Some synthetic oil won't properly mix in diesel fuel and cheap motor oil almost certainl ywon't. Best just to use castor. It doesn't 'gum up' as much as with glows as diesels don't run as hot. Commercially made diesel fuel is about twice the price of glow fuel and many model shop don't keep it in stock. Engines. PAW. Don't rely on these Indian or Chinese copies or near copies  of 'classic' diesels with English sounding  names. Edited By Richard Clark 2 on 06/07/2020 07:58:07 Edited By Richard Clark 2 on 06/07/2020 08:30:11

Posted by Graham Davies 3 on 05/07/2020 23:05:20: For all the good solid technical advice this forum has provided, it all falls into a back seat when compared to this thread! I am actually working on importing a Chinese Kylie Minogue. We expect a reasonable facsimile, although at a slightly reduced scale, and with some questionable functionality. For most people, it will almost certainly be good enough. However, all good NOBs know the benefit of crafting their own... Questionable functionality will make the Minogue replica very accurate.. What we really need is a replica of that ghastly 'professional know-all' TV woman who tells us how to make Christmas decorations, lay the table, wrap parcels so they look pretty, make avocado and quinoa canapes, tend potted plants, and how to buy a house. It could put our ARTFs together for us.

We used to call ARTF purchasers "Cheque book flyers" and treat them with contempt. The name has changed but from many people the contempt remains. I'm not one of them of course Then there are those who create a 'build' thread for an ARTF. I'm eagerly awaiting the flat pack table episode. That will be real exciting. Or even better 'unboxing' for people who can't even chew gum and walk at the same time

A problem with wood dowel is it's not made out of any specific wood so its properties vary a lot. Birch would be ok if you can be sure that's what the dowel you buy actually is. I would just use square bass or spruce, You can sand the outer edges round where it notices, such as the bottom edges of the fuselage. Mayby use dowel for the cross pieces. Other than that it won't show after covering anyway. Dowel in the cockpit is good. If you want a leather cockpit surround just use a bit of old leather from a glove cut from the wrist to the tip of a finger, so it's long enough, bent to an inverted U section to fit over the sheeting and glued on with contact adhesive. Don't try to pad it or stitch it, that always ends up looking like repaired botoxed lips with the stitches still in

Most dowel is so brittle it's next to useless for such a structure. Carbon is very difficult to glue reliably. Sand the area of every joint to roughen up the surface and don't touch it again before glueing. You might try the slow (12-24 hour) setting 'Araldite' epoxy, (Don't use Araldite Rapid). I certainty wouldn't trust any other make. You can get it from Halfords.

Personally I think that as the average glow engine spews copious amounts of fuel containing 15-20% oil from both its carburettor and its exhaust a little extra leakage from the silencer joint doesn't matter.

Regardless of size I suggest no more than 50mm apart. Make the ribs our of 1/16 balsa and use 1/16 x 3/16 cap strips. Don't fit the leading edge 'diamond' (or diagonal) fashion. It may reduce the time shaping the LE but it makes a first class rib splitter in a hard landing or if the plane, or even just a wingtip, hits something.

I've only ever done it once. On the RBC kit 45 inch span 90mm EDF Grumman Panther. I use Flair 'medium thickness' woven glass and their matching epoxy resin. It all went fine, wasn't difficult, and the finish was good. But it turned out to be less 'ding' resistant than doped on heavyweight tissue, was heaver, and added no more strength than the doped on tissue. I won't bother with it again.

As Bob and Erfolg say it's all down to good design. Which is rare in the average ARTF, which in any other field would mostly be thought of as very 'low end' products, (It's even worse in ready made and quite expensive (£1000 plus) so-called 'scale' model ships of the Nelsonian period, mostly made in the Philippines, which are really horrendous 'caricatures'. So what do I do? First, I very rarely buy an ARTF (three in my last 20 years of model planes). I only bought the balsa with a little plywood BH Viperjet because glass and/or carbon fuselage ARTF EDFs are very rare. I don't particularly like the Viperjet as a plane but it was easy to obtain. Gluing a solid carbon rod inside the original wing joiner tube was a simple and obvious solution to its floppy wings. Generally I build from scratch or use plans and kits, both of which I modify to suit my own ideas. Doing that is more difficult with an ARTF where it's not easy to get inside. Take wing spars. I always put a web with vertical grain between them. Between, not stuck on the outside as it uses more material, so is heavier, and the glue joint could shear under stress. If it's a two piece wing (which I try to avoid) I mostly use brass wing tubes as model plane carbon tubes have near zero resistance to splitting, as Bob said. And I don't just glue them to the ribs, I pack out with hard balsa to the spars, or if they are not in line with the spars, to cross grained sheet I put internally between the spars and the LE. If a scratch built planw I always taper the spars between the root and the tip as the stress gets less as you go outwards and there is no point in making things heavier than they need be. On a one piece wing, which I prefer I use two ply joiner, one at the front, the other at the back and one extends further than the other to avoid too much of a discontinuity where the joiners end. Also I don't make them too thick, which causes a greater discontinuity. Tailplanes. A built up one, with or without sheet covering, but preferably with, is far less likely to flutter than a solid sheet one. Incidentally, when I first met my wife-to-be (in a pub) some years ago she came back with me. She fondled the three pointed star on my car's bonnet and said "That's an engineer's car". Sure it is

Posted by alex nicol on 03/07/2020 22:21:30: Hi Richard, For what it's worth hi wing aircraft will have an element of self righting due to the pendulum effect caused by the weight of the fuselage hung below the wing. A low wing aircraft will have less or no self righting as the weight is on top of the wing and as soon as you bank there is no self righting effect as the fuselage assists the bank. With regard to the wing looking droopy the model in the image has a span of 82" has no dihedral and no sign of any droop   You are correct and your plane looks fine.. In fact I have often thought of building the similar  Ugly Stick and probably will sooner or later. I shall omit the dihedral shown on the original Phil Kraft plan. Incidentally don't believe this nonsense about ailerons being near useless on a model with lots of dihedral. The Junior 60 has a huge amount of dihedral which I kept for 'atmosphere' yet mine flies fine without using the rudder at all. I just fitted inset top hinged ailerons (strip ailerons wouldn't look right) and set it up with 50% differential. The ailerons are 'crisp' and there is no visible adverse yaw at all. I gradually reduced the  differential and it makes no visible difference though you might find it visible sat in the cockpit of a real plane. But AFAIK there   no way to actually try that. 'Experts' dreams up these myths, mostly to fill the pages  of a model magazine   and all the other 'experts' just repeat them. . How does an aircraft turn? Ailerons only - The aircraft rolls somewhat and slides sideways down the resultant 'gravity slope'. The vertical fin at the back resists this slide and so the plane weathercocks into a turn. Rudder only - Rudder offset makes the tail slide sideways, slowing one wing and speeding up the other. So more lift on one side and the plane rolls somewhat. From then on it is the same as the ailerons above. Edited By Richard Clark 2 on 04/07/2020 00:32:11

Posted by Ron Gray on 03/07/2020 17:51:41: Simple answer - weight. Size for size a solid bar will be stronger than a tube of the same diameter but a lot heavier. You can increase the diameter of the tube by a small amount and with the correct wall thickness you will have the same strength as the bar but a lot lighter. My 'solid' modification added 60 grams to a near 5 Kg model. It is insignificant. Considerably less than an empty or full tank on the average glow plane. Increasing the diameter of the joining tube will involve increasing the diameter of the tubes in the wings. A lot of hassle on an ARTF. Thicker walls? You have to use whatever your LMS or online shop has got. In fact I suspect the 'carbon' joining tube on the Black Horse Viperjet isn't carbon at all. Just cheap glass with just enough carbon filaments in it to turn it black. Also cheap polyester resin rather than epoxy.

Posted by Bob Cotsford on 03/07/2020 21:45:06: Posted by Richard Clark 2 on 03/07/2020 19:01:13: Chris and Bob, Often the part that goes through the fuselage isn't constrained in an outer tube. My 90mm 55 inch span EDF 10 cell approx 4 Kilowatt Black Horse Viperjet weighs nearly 5 Kg (their claimed weight didn't originally include the batteries) and the way the wings flexed just holding it up by the tips I would never have trusted the carbon joining tube in flight, least of all with a high G manoeuvre. So I found a close fitting carbon rod and epoxied it into the provided tube. The better fly fishing rod manufacturers go to great lengths to produce what they call a high 'hoop strength' in their rods. Sounds like a very good idea in that case, what was the phrase I used previously? Bad design? Bad design is common. Even the horrendously expensive Bob Violett BVM Jets (turbines and EDFs) suffer from it. They use a separate vertical carbon tongue in each wing half which fit into a carbon 'whisker' impregnated nylon moulding bolted to a plywood former in the fuselage. As a result that moulding is the only thing that resists the wings folding. It works most of the time but they have had to introduce 'modification notices' for several of their models advising you to buy their 'improved' mouldings AFTER wing folds on their demonstrators. Notably when they have increased the thrust of their EDF units by a couple of pounds - so it's a pretty marginal design. (Personally I think the design is nuts.)