Robin Colbourne

I've recently been given a well flown Wot 4 Foam-E Mk2. The motor can rock up and down by a few degrees (approx 3mm, measured at the front of the prop adaptor). When looking at the nose area from below, I can see that the transverse metal plate about 1/2" from the front of the fuselage moves relative to the foam around it. Is this normal? If its is not normal, options seem to be to put some glue between the metal and the foam and/or put a shim of, say thin plywood in front of the plate to take up the slack. Has anyone else had similar issues and if so, what did you do about it?

There is a J Perkins Albatross wing for sale in this lot in Aberystwyth: J Perkins Albatross on Ebay

If the centre of gravity is in the right place, you should be making wing or tail incidence changes to sort the glide out, not adding weight. The model with the nosewheel is going to have more parasitic drag below the thrust line and centre of gravity, so it is would be natural that it will have a tendency to dip its nose more as it accelerates. Very slight differences in the incidence of the wing and tailplane mountings and any wash in/wash out (twist) in the wings and tail, whether intentional or not would also affect this. If they are essentially the same design, can you try swapping the wings (and tail if possible) between the two fuselages and see what happens. Make one change at a time and record the results. If the wing is held by rubber bands, you can add more incidence with bits of balsa or card under the leading or trailing edge to see its effect. If the wing is bolted on at the trailing edge, you can reduce incidence on a high wing model or increase it on a low wing model by adding packing between the wing and fuselage. Control linkages can have differing amounts of slop in snakes, hinges and clevises, so these could also be behaving differently between the two models. By testing the models in the glide as opposed to under power, you should be able to rule out motor power and thrust line differences. Make sure you use the same prop for both models so its unpowered drag is the same in each case.

Divide & conquer...

A job lot of glider wings for a song on Ebay. One of them should fit: Glider Wings job lot

It looks like a Aviomodelli Ariane 5 from Italy. There are a few pictures of one for sale here: Aviomodelli Ariane 5 Motor Glider Mantua Models still show it on their website, but it appears to be out of production: Mantua UK - Ariane 5 Motor Glider

Fair enough Gary. As it is now quite an old model, your best bet is likley to be in bought up job lots from ex-modellers who are selling up or estate sales. In this case it would be worht letting the various commercial buyers of model aircraft job lots know that you are looking for a Durabat so they can keep an eye open for one. I would also suggest setting up searches on Facebook Marketplace, Ebay and Gumtree to notify you if one gets listed.

Gary, I can understand you wanting an original Durabat, but are you aware of the 'Spadtothe Bone' Website which has a whole range of designs using the similar construction techniques? Simple Plastic Airplane Designs - Spad to the Bone

This was raised on the Aerodrome forum. The answer suggests that the Royal Aircraft Factory where the SE5a was designed used the inboard position, however sub-contractors used the outboard position. SE5a lower surface roundel placement The outboard position has the centre of the roundel aligned with the interplane struts and is the full chord of the wing, so very easy to mark out. Maybe it was simply a case of speeding up production?

If you keep an eye on Facebook Marketplace and Ebay, there are often people selling random collections of wings or fuselages. This example in Stoke on Trent has three of the same type of fuselage as yours, so may well have a wing that would fit: R/C Glider wing and fuselage assortment

The American manufacturer, Kraft Radio Control, were making transmitters with a single stick which had a top that was twisted for rudder control, back in the 1960s. Here is a more modern conversion: Single stick transmitter conversion

Which is the nearest Lidl to Hatton Garden in London? Asking for a friend... 😄

The Digital Hot Air Gun is probably the best thing they sell. Its ideal for covering and covering repairs as you can set it to a temperature you know won't be to much for the material with which you are working. It makes a great companion to a Prolux digital covering iron (sadly Lidl don't do these!). I was using the Lidl cordless multitool at work last year, and it compares well to my own cordless Dremel. We were using the Lidl one every day, and provided you remembered to put it on charge at lunchtime and before you went home, it held up admirably. We even used a 50mm diamond cutting disc on ours.

Red Letter Days probably just put a premium on what you would pay by going directly to a club. Some clubs such as Lasham operate every flyable day. Other smaller volunteer-run clubs may operate weekends only. Hill sites such as The Midland Gliding Club at the Long Mynd, Yorkshire Club at Sutton Bank, London Gliding Club at Dunstable and the Bristol & Gloucestershire Club at Nympsfield, near Stroud, give the advantage of ridge soaring on a non-thermic day. It is usual for trial lessons to be aerotows, although if the club has a winch as well, it is often possible to have some winch launches as well if the first flight was enjoyable. A word of warning, doing aerobatics on the first flight can often leave the passenger feeling queasy. It is better to have a more sedate flight and actually control the glider (most instructors will allow this after the launch phase is over and before the landing circuit is started). Typically a 2000ft aerotow in still air will give about a 15 to 20 minute flight (including the tow). A flight by winch launch to 1000ft will only last about five minutes as the launch is quicker, and in both cases the landing circuit starts at about 750ft.

If you're looking for a Super Frontier, this one on Facebook Marketplace appears to be a bargain. I tried to persuade our club to get it as a trainer that our older pupils might actually be able to see, but got told we're not buying a club trainer. Super Frontier Trainer

A cardboard model building event would make a fun club competition, using a specified motor/esc/battery drivetrain, and the bare minimum of off the shelf parts. Several designs in Cardboard are available: Cardsharp Cardboard Stick Pappendeckel:

Jim, the supplement maybe due to a fatal accident which involved an AcroWot. The tail surfaces came adrift and the model crashed killing a thirteen year old girl, Tara Lipscombe. The model was found to have had the failed tail surface joint onto film-covered components. Although the model concerned was an AcroWot, the failure could just as easily have happened to any model in which the same error had been made. AcroWot fatal accident - April 2003

It sounds a bit like our gliding club's winch; if the cable was wound on under too much tension, a turn of cable could get pulled under two adjacent turns that had a small gap between them. The cable was then trapped which would then cause the weak link to break when towing the cable back to the launch point. Synthetic cables also had an issue if wound on under tension, then left until the following week. It wasn't unknown for steel cable drums to be crushed by the cumulative effect of all the turns shrinking a little bit each. The winch manufacturers advised always having the last 'wind in' of the day just towing a tyre across the airfield, to ensure the cable was relaxed. In terms of the printer filament, if it was wound on when warm or under a lot of tension, and allowed to get very cold, the tension could similarly have dragged strands to where they are trapped by others.

Perhaps the solution to the scale finishing issue lies in getting something like a car wrap pre-printed. It might seem expensive for a one off, but once the hours of labour and cost of materials for conventional methods are considered, it might work. In theory, if the files are kept, repair panels could be printed too.

The Air Transport Auxiliary and the American Women's Air Service Pilots must have had a few Barbaras, Lucindas and Cynthias, so not totally unscale. 😄

I bought an EZ Sportsman 25H with an Eny SS30 on the front at a bring & buy (I think), just because I wanted a trainer type model for giving lessons at the time. It turned out to be a really nice model as, with a near symmetrical wing section it was very aerobatic. I think a battery failure caused its demise, going straight in from a good height. I subsequently found an unbuilt kit on Ebay 'collection only' and persuaded the seller to post it. I don't have a picture of mine, but this is one off the net:

Leccyflyer, there's a Flair Attila wiht an SC30 four stroke for sale here: https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/179191618508882?ref=marketplace_profile&referral_code=undefined

Rich, there's a Mk1 Hiboy in this collection. There's also a Falcon Kits Sunbeam which is a very nice model for a .25 or 30. Mk1 HiBoy, Falcon Kits Sunbeam & Extra 300S in Wells

There are only two sorts of weather; building weather and flying weather.

Having acquired a number of ARTF 40-powered trainers to assist with training at our club, I'm now faced with patching holes in each of them. Whilst some will need covering cut out and replaced with Solarfilm or similar, I would like to preserve the existing printed colour schemes as much as possible. To that end I'm looking for methods that allow as much of the existing covering to be reused. I'm sure I saw an article about this years ago that had some very clever methods, but can't remember what they were. I have some clear laminating film and a Prolux digital covering iron and I have found the latter on low settings will help re-tack and shrink the original printed covering. Any methods and suggestions greatly appreciated!