Tim Kearsley

And me David. Richard is very helpful in answering questions as well as supplying the goods.

I must say what a remarkable service from Richard at T9. I ordered a few items this afternoon and had the immediate confirmation of order email at 1301. This was followed, just 10 minutes later by the dispatch notification, including Royal Mail tracking number. How's that for rapid response?!

Looking good Matthew. You'll be rewarded with a really lovely model to fly when you complete it. I'll try and get a clubmate to take some flying video when I next go to the field. Although you can't see them in the pictures I put online I did add the skids. On my version the rear wing bolt and ply washer stand a little proud of the wing, so it seemed worth doing.

Thanks Mike, that's most informative. I can see what you're saying that by monitoring both RSSI and VFR you can possibly diagnose better what's going on, i.e. whether the received signal is just low in strength or whether the signal level is OK but suffering interference. For my purpose I'm just trying to find a reasonable way of getting early warning that there may be a problem before it becomes critical. From what you're saying, a VFR as low as 60% is still a viable signal. As I have logging turned on (0.5 sec interval) I suppose the way forward is to examine the logs after a few flights and see what sort of range the VFR metric has and set a warning level appropriately. I should have stated that the tx is a Horus X10S, running OpenTx 2.3.14 and rx is a G-RX8 running ACCESS 2.1.7.

Interesting story and you're right to be sceptical. It's one reason why I think (hope) VFR ought to be better than RSSI. After all, the rx must know whether a received frame is valid or not and, given that, it's just a digital task of computing (total frames - invalid frames)/total frames.

I've just upgraded the firmware on one of my receivers (a G-RX8) from ACCST to ACCESS. One of the features ACCESS provides is a piece of telemetry on signal quality - VFR, which I believe is an acronym for "Valid Frame Rate". I think this might be a better measure of signal quality than RSSI and I'm planning to program a warning if VFR drops below a given value for a given duration, for example if VFR drops below 80% for at least two seconds. My question is - what do you think would be appropriate values for warning levels for VFR and duration? Also, would you agree that VFR is probably a better metric than RSSI? Thank you.

With a 3S, 2200mAh LiPo, 822g.

I finally got round to fabricating a cowl for the TQ, from a tonic water bottle. It was the first time I've used the technique and the result wasn't too bad. I roughened the surface with some 600 paper and then applied several coats of Plastikote. I've also added some vinyl lettering to the wing and fin. A few shots of the finished model attached.

My take on this is that, since kinetic energy is given by the formula E = 0.5mv^2, relative to the fixed ground frame of reference the kinetic energy is zero in both cases, as its velocity in this frame of reference is zero. The italics are important!

I think @Tim Hooper documented a build of this model a year or two ago in his excellent Bench Blog column in RCM&E didn't he? His was a plan build though, not this kit. It's certainly a quirky one, as John says. I nearly bought the kit myself, at last week's Old Warden festival.

I had two more flights with the TQ this morning. I like it more and more! We use the term "flies on rails" a lot but this one really does. I like pulling up vertically and then a half-roll to inverted and back down. Beautiful! 😄

The thought did cross my mind Dave but I replaced the RTC battery just a few months ago (a right fiddly job!) so it should be OK,

Yesterday, I was flying a new model with an old X8R rx. Tx was a Horus X10S. After a couple of minutes' flight I had a verbal announcement of "low battery". The tx was fully charged and an inspection of the flight log showed that it didn't drop below 8.1V. I hadn't run the "Discover new sensors" routine so there was no telemetry of the rx battery voltage and no other sensors were installed. The rx power was from the BEC in the ESC. Frankly, I'm baffled as to where this "warning" came from. As a precaution, I landed straight away but the 3S LiPo in the model was showing 76% on a simple checker. Besides, as I say, there was nothing in the model to sense pack voltage. Any ideas anyone?

I kept the expo as you suggested John, just set the throws to 75% of what you recommended on the plan. I was impressed with how well it flies and it has such a striking silhouette in the sky when seen in plan-form. I was pleased personally at how little trimming it needed - I must have built it reasonably true. 😀

The Top Quark had its maiden flight today, on a very warm, sunny day with only very light, rather variable winds. What an absolute beauty! I launched the model on a slightly upward trajectory while clubmate Jeff manned the sticks. The only trim needed was a couple of clicks of up-elevator and she was soon eating up the sky. There's no shortage of power on a 3S, 2200 mAh LiPo and loops and rolls are no trouble at all. I took the sticks for the second flight and I can confirm she's a delight. I used slightly lower throws on elevons than John recommends but that's just a matter of personal preference. Performance is excellent and you can pull nice, big loops. Landing is a doddle. All in all I'm very pleased and I can see the Top Quark spending a lot of time in the air. A clubmate videoed the first flight and I'll try and put some of it online.