Plummet

Wood-turning lathe skew chisel. If you get it right the chisel produces a finish that would just be wrong to try to enhance by sandpaper. Just needs wax finish. If you get it wrong you get a 'dig' and you start again. Plummet

I built one of these with the built up wing and it flew beautifully. (That is, until I was distracted, it flew too far away and I lost orientation.) Plummet

No - not April. It is the issue that has just come through my letter box.. It states that the upper surface of the wing is around 10 C warmer than the lower surface. "That effectively lowers air pressure on the upper surface, lowering drag and generating extra lift." Plummet

There is an article in the Oct. 14th issue of the New Scientist on page 18. Some people researching drone designs have discovered something new about albatrosses. It might be of use to people designing and building gliders. The article is on the web here:- https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23631472-600-drone-engineers-accidentally-explain-the-colour-of-albatross-wings/ The gist is that they have black plumage on the top of their wings. The sun warms it up. This reduces the air pressure over the top of the wings and thus generate extra lift. Plummet Edited By Plummet on 13/10/2017 16:06:57 Edited By Plummet on 13/10/2017 16:09:36

Totally non-approved, but so far I have had no problems... I wear specs and find it difficult to keep them clean. I did find a superb brand of spec cleaner, but then they stopped selling it. I did a bit of research and this is the recipe I now use:- 50% Isopropyl Alcohol 50% Distilled or de-ionised water a few drops of cheap washing up liquid. The water and alcohol dissolve and wash away the crud. The washing up liquid helps stop my specs steaming up. Plummet

This landing was sponsored by [insert name of tyre company here].

One more possibility... You can have the comfortable high work surface, but then use what is known as a perching stool. These are sometimes supplied to folk who find it difficult to stand for a long time to allow them to do jobs that they usually stood to do - for example - washing up. We inherited one from my mother-in-law, and now another folding one from a friend who has just had a hip replacement. She got it from a charity shop. Plummet

There's a lot of it about. I have received a similar one. More strangely, I received a message from a company in the Channel Islands about an account. I am not anywhere near the Channel Islands, but most years we would have been there at the time when I received the message. Plummet

I have been wearing varifocals for ages, and not had any great trouble. Just remember that the close up bit of the lens is at the bottom, so make sure that your specs are not crawling down your nose. For close work I do sometimes just lift up my specs a bit off my nose to get a better look at something small. HOWEVER ... I do do a bit of close work, I make some of my own garments, and when you make a boo-boo you have to unpick seams. This is a bit much for my ageing eyesight and so I got my optician to make me a cheap pair of strong reading glasses. These are stronger than I need for reading, but are great for close fiddly work.  They are horrible to wear if you want, for instance, look out of the window! Also remember that your eyes will always see detail better in a good light. IKEA do some very cheap LED lights on stalks that are good for illuminating your work. Plummet   Edited By Plummet on 24/09/2017 12:56:43

See! Mode 1. The throttle pedal is on the right! Plummet

What connectors are you using? I had a very strange problem a few years ago with some bullet connectors. I had a bit of wood with drilled holes in it to hold the bullets while I soldered them. The problem was that the flux from the solder started to coat the inside of the holes and to then coat the outside surface of the hot bullet while being soldered. This was not visible, but gave a very bad or non-existent connection. Try cleaning your connectors Plummet

Try http://www.modelfixings.co.uk/tools.htm Plummet

... and thanks for saying it. Although in my work I was never formally a teacher, I did do some teaching. It was great when I met one of my students after a few years and he told me that one of my throw away comments to him had been very helpful. Ta

I never had to work with plate rectifiers.  What did I miss. Plummet Edited By Plummet on 01/09/2017 14:07:57

Aaaaah, Burnt out electronics ... When I used to work in the electronics world we were mostly using discrete components and not these integrated circuit thingies. When something burnt out, or as we said, 'Let the magic smoke out' , you could often identify the component from the smell. There was saute'd resistor, fried capacitor and roasted transformer - all smelled different. Plummet

She is sat behind me at the moment dealing with a plate of freshly made warm potato salad. (The recipes is available on request.) Plummet

... and of course there are more and more petrol engines with their electrical sparky bits which might generate radio waves as well. Plummet

In the olden days there was a lot written and talked about about avoiding metal to metal joints and contacts because it caused radio interference. There is a thread going at the moment about silver soldering a horn/hinge arrangement, with a Z bend on the pushrod, Is metal to metal interference a thing of crystal radio days and no longer a problem, or was it all just an excuse for pilot error? Plummet

Posted by Chris Barlow on 19/08/2017 21:32:55: Johnny Cash "Ring of fire" (I just know a mod is goanna pull this) Actually ... No. It was quite mild actually. There was a whole dried red chilli in the spice mix but the end result was not very hot. Unless, like me, you eat the chilli. Perhaps 'end result' was a bad choice of words there. Plummet

I couldn't possibly ... excuse me a moment... say Plummet

I know that Aldi has some useful tools for sale from time to time, but ... For the first time in my life I have just prepared a meal using a packet "sauce mix".  (Actually, I did try the Vesta dehydrated stuff, but in my view that doesn't count.)  I do a lot of cooking and I do a lot of Indian cookery - having had several trips to India, and during those trips I would get into as many kitchens as possible to learn cooking skills and methods. One of our favourite areas of India to visit is Kerala, and Aldi is now selling a "Kerala Curry mix", and I have just eaten the results. I have to admit that the result is really really good. There is also a Goan pack. We have yet to try it, but I would thoroughly recommend the Keralan one. Enjoy! Plummet Edited By Plummet on 19/08/2017 20:58:02

On the 2nd and 3rd of September at Much Marcle there is a LMA show? https://www.largemodelassociation.com/event/much-marcle-model-show-2017/ Plummet

I do not know where you are, but ... There is a leather merchant near us (Its near Keighley) and if you are handy with a (big) needle you might be able to get some leather to match and patch. As I understand the process you mark where you need the stitches, and sew them but with a lot of spare thread, so that you can work from both sides of the patch, and you use a curved needle where you cannot get access to both sides. Once all the stitches are sewn you tighten the threads to pull the patch into place. I presume that there is no way to remove the seat covers! Plummet

Brushless motors have three wires because ... Well, Brushed and brushless motors both move because a wire carrying an electric current in a magnetic field generates a force, In a brushed motor the magnets (or coils) generating the electric field are fixed, The armature - the rotating bit - has coils of wire. As the armature rotates different coils need to carry the current so that the conducting bit is always in the right place relative to the magnetic field. The brushes achieve this by conducting the current onto differing coils as the armature turns. The current supplied to a simple brushed motor is direct current One wire is +ve. The other is -ve. (Unless you wish to reverse the motor. You can think of a brushless motor as being like a simple compass needle (a magnet) surrounded by three coils, arranged round it equally spaced round the circle. Lets call the three coils A B and C. If we energise A, the compass needle will point at it. We now de-energise A and energise B. The compass needle will rotate to point at B. Now turn B off and C on. Keep energising A B C A B C A B C ... and the compass needle will spin. The three wires can be thought of as each driving one of the coils. What you do in a brushless motor is to generate a rotating magnetic field which attracts the magnets to rotate with the field. The current in each wire feeding it will sometimes be in one direction, sometimes the other. The brushless speed controller needs to generate the correct varying currents in each wire. Incidentally, the direction in which the brushless motor rotates is easily reversed. Consider the sequence A B C A B C A B C ... If we reverse two wires (say A and B) we get B A C B A C B A C ... Look at the sequence, and note that C B A is just A B C backwards. Of course in real life a brushless motor is a lot more complicated than I have described, but the principle is the same. Plummet Does this help?

I have my (then very expensive) Casio scientific calculator on my desk now. At school there were no calculators, only log tables and slide rules. We also have an abacus - which I have never learned to use efficiently, and an old Comptometer. Using the Comptometer is a brain strain. Addition and multiplication is not so bad - subtraction needs strange rules that I cannot remember, and I have not dared to try and understand division. Plummet