Mr Fro

I'm in Suffolk but have also tried Norfolk clubs too. I've only lived in Suffolk a decade so they probably still see me as a foreigner. 😁 I can't imagine why they all give me the same response, my personality isn't that abrasive.

I'm somewhat of an outsider being as I inherited a number of planes from my late father-in-law. They're essentially new as in not flown and "in time" I'll get them all put together to sell. However, I'm an engineer and like tiddling about with stuff like that so it shouldn't be an issue building them. Also however, like his cars and boats that I built and sold, I'd like to give them a test before handing them on. This last bit is a problem as (from the perspective of someone who hasn't flown a model before) it's silly difficult to do so. Every club a I've contacted gives me the "You don't know what you're doing, you'll crash, even by building them you'll kill a million babies" speach which is a bit off-putting. I even got a lecture from the bloke in the model shop who told me a I was definitely going to chop my arm off with a prop (I only went in to buy some fuel). This apparent barrier to entry I think puts off a great deal of people. Therefore the liklihood of someone casually buying a plane to give it a go is likely to be low. Furthermore, the likelihood of someone dropping a grand on something they have to spend weeks building is vanishingly small. Yes it would be possible for an enterprising individual to design (or license) a model with a view to generating a production run. That person has to have the kit to either volume produce a skeleton, assemble it & cover it or make up some moulds / formers in order to blow polystyrene / vacuum form / lay up the structural components. All doable but then, as is evident on this thread, different people want different things so said individual is suddenly in for a good bit of investment to service a rather small market. That is unless they produce only a few designs to make them affordable or make everything bespoke in which case things become expensive for the end user. I'm very much in favour of people being able to give stuff a go and I think that if clubs were a bit more open to outsiders coming along to crash a couple of hundred quid worth of their hard earned then there might be a bit more take up of the hobby, thus greater market potential and more players in the market.

We were talking about holidays at the weekend. She said "I want to go somewhere I've never been before". I said "Try the kitchen".

Resin prints can be very brittle so you'd have to consider the fatiguing it might endure. I dunno if fuel would do it a mischief - can you print out a test piece and see?

I didn't know that about Cura - I'll have to check it out! Can't say I use the Cura much anyway, I much prefer the Prusa as they work pretty much every time without fiddling.

The diagonal seams look like over extrusion to me - you should be able to dial this down in your printer software. It's quite common in non direct drive printers and can take a bit of fiddling to get right. You may be stuck with the seam near the leading edge - that's where each perimeter layer starts & finishes. Extrusion fiddling will help but you will probably still have something there although it may not cause you a functional issue. Is there a reason why you're not using a gyroidal fill?

They probably won't be helping matters! With small cuts & low speeds, HSS tooling is generally preferable.

Hey Andy, What lathe and tooling are you using?

Hi David, I doubt the one in the loft is in poor shape but then again I've not actually seen it. My wife's thought on breaking it up was based on the assumption that no-one would want it. There's a rumour that it might emerge in to the light of day next weekend so we'll see what we see!

That's the plan! My son is only 5 and my daughter 3 so a little young for power tools yet. Having said that, grandad promised him his little unimat lathe / mill combo which is currently sitting on the bed of my mill (a.k.a. the friendly robot) ready for when he's old enough. I strongly suspect that my daughter will take more of an interest though! We've kept a couple of buggies and a tank for the kids to use - the tank sees some action and I'm sure that in time the buggies will come out. @Andy Gates - I'm just going by the local club website. It seems they're quite regimented. I will get up there at some point and check the place out. Personally, I'd like to see all his gear to to people who will enjoy it. So far, everyone who has bought stuff from us has been very happy because most things were unused or in pristine condition.

Thanks @toto & @J D 8. My wife is a bit on the fence about digging the last one out of the loft. It's a big old thing apparently and she isn't convinced it's worth doing anything with - she's talking about breaking it up and binning it. That's fair enough as it was her dad so her decision. I can't really see me (or the kids when they're old enough) having much opportunity to fly the big ones. The small ones maybe good for a bit of messing about though. I think the main hurdle is the organisation of using them. Get the license, join a club, book a slot and all that. With cars you just go somewhere and rag them about until you're bored. My father-in-law had a knack for spotting rare stuff and squirreling it away - he had quite a few rare Tamiya cars that got snapped up by a very enthusiastic collector but I think he might have bished a bit with the planes.

I have limited experience of LiPo but what I can say is that I have a good few branded packs that were set to storage charge a minimum of 4 years ago and, with the exception of a few puffy ones which I've left alone, they all took the charge they were supposed to take.

That's understandable. Mind you, EDF can be noisy too - I've been using one for something at work *may not be exactly it's design purpose* and I clocked it at 134 dB full chat on 48 V. Here's the motors I have: I've got the gubbins that goes with them in a box somewhere. Plane wise I've got a tatty looking foam BAE Hawk: A composite SU37: A Cessna Skylane-182 & a Piper J-3 Cub: A composite G500: And there's a foam robbe BAE 146 in the loft which hasn't made it out yet. I've got all the bits for everything but since the wife put me to work digging out a bloody great veg patch, I don't really have the enthusiasm to root them out for some quick pics! Oh, the slabs are 600 x 600 for scale.

Having had a glow engined rc car back in the day I appreciate that they are quite highly strung compared to petrol engines (which all the cars I have use). I'm surprised at the demise of 2-stroke nitro - surely they have a superior power to weight than their 4-stroke counterparts. In any event, I've got 2 x 4-stroke & a 2-stroke so once the fuel arrives I guess I'll see what's what. I absolutely get the appeal of electric models - they're so clean, quiet & smell free but the draw back is the charging (he says while currently cycling NiCd Rx packs to see which ones are recoverable).

That's interesting, thanks. I got that impression from my local model shop the other day when I popped in for some fuel. The guy said I was a fool for buying fuel to test the engines as the fuel itself was worth more due to the market bottoming out.