Mike T

It's a faint hope, but fingers crossed they ban advertisers who think that an adequately descriptive title for a wanted ad is the single word - 'WANTED'. They are usually the same people who put 'wanted' ads in the for sale sections...

Now that sounds like a plan! You could keep the stubs of the crossbar and down tube to act as mounts for the motor. If you cut along the mid-line of each stub, then heat them up and beat them mercilessly to 'un-tube' them, then you might end up with plates wide enough to span the front and rear of the motor. More easily done with those frames having larger diameter tubes. Time to start dragging the local ponds... PS - if you leave the stubs long, then you increase the distance between motor and handle, improving torque resistance for 2-handed operation.

25mm aluminium tube (a.k.a. 'aerial mast' from B&Q). Cut to length, mount in the lathe and put a heavy knurl on it. One handle. 6mm mounting plates at both ends of the motor, drilled/bored to take the handle. Fix a bearing in each end of the handle, run a layshaft through, mount the large pulley to the layshaft. You'll need to machine collars to support/retain the bearings, retain the layshaft, etc., but that's all plain turning and a bit of cross-drilling and tapping to take grub screws, etc. As to why you would want to climb this particular mountain - well, its because its there!!

Indeed - but its easy to tell from driving on other parts of the field when the ground is at the right degree of plastic deformity for our specialist treatment! ?

Many years ago I glued some doublers with PVA. The plane met its end about 18 months later. When I broke the fus. up for binning, one of the doublers split away, exposing uncured white glue at the centre! I put his down to my use of cyano around the joint edges, effectively sealing it. (This was not the cause of the crash, BTW!) I still use pva, but thinly and evenly applied, and well slid around to get the joint to 'suck down'. I may still tack with cyano, but leave the joint edges mostly open so the pva can cure.

The biggest change Eddie Stocker made was to make the parts fit! I bought a 2nd hand 80" Pup (post Bod, pre Stocker). New cost at the time was just over £200. I reckon mine was just about worth the 80 quid I gave for it...

When the ground conditions are right (not wet, just firm enough to deform), we drive up and down our patch with our cars. 3 seems optimum, else you get in each others' way. Takes about 20 minutes to work from the centreline out. We save it for the end of the day when a low sun helps you see where you've been ?. As with most other Club activities, the same few mugs end up burning their petrol...

Absolutely spot on. I wouldn't self-tap into metal or wood mounts, but into GRP designed for the purpose - why not? The only problem is getting the pilot hole just right. The temptation is to drill undersize for a really tight fit, but that risks shearing the screw head. If you get the hole right and use proper Parker Kalon (or equivalent) screws, then there'll be no problem.

Mad on Models (Newport) is long gone. Puffin Models (Bristol) changed hands and appears to have gone pear-shaped... Abergavenny Model Centre has gone as well - serious blow ?

If you're in the State of California, pretty much everything is known (or suspected) to cause cancer!

Off topic, but if you ARE visiting The Works they do some excellent artists paintbrush selections for about a fiver. I was prepared for cheap and cheerful, but they have proved to be very good quality. Back to PVA...

Can these things be washed? What if the previous owner had psoriasis, or was an habitual nose-picker?

Well, we all speak as we find, don't we? ? Some facts and figures showing the wider picture: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1069943/uk-most-preferred-parcel-delivery-providers/ Note the 95% customer satisfaction comments...

...which is what I said. Does anybody bother to read prior posts? ?

The original 'Trans Mitt' is now made by P.J. Sails: http://www.pjsails.co.uk/index.html (download the 'general' pdf)

We must be lucky (I speak for my street). All of our delivery services including Parcelforce have been uniformly superb, particularly during the worst of the pandemic and lockdowns. Special mention to Parcelforce, who carted some parcels all the way down to our greenhouse, instead of leaving them where I'd asked which would have seen the contents ruined in a heavy shower. The downside is that our two lovely east-european postie ladies, who were around almost every day during the earlier lockdowns, now seem to have disappeared, which is an absolute crying shame...

When I painted my Gordon Whitehead FF Sopwith Triplane back in the 70s, the info I was able to get at the time on WW1 British colours ranged from "they were green" to "they were brown". So I got 10 tinlets of Humbrol Dark Earth and 10 of Dark Green (i.e. early 1940s day camouflage scheme) and mixed them together. The result looked a bit light, so I stirred in a tinlet of black and painted the result on. It looked just right to me and in fact looked a touch brown in strong sunlight and distinctly green in poor light! When I came to paint my 1/4 scale Pup many years later, I used Flair Spectrum PC10 which looked pretty much like the mix I'd previously come up with. Spectrum paints are defunct, but the Flair colours are now produced by Guild as the Chroma range - and they do a PC 10...

If you firmly mount the engine and use a heat gun on the head, then a properly ground screwdriver should remove the screws without damage. The drawings in the article linked by John Lee show the head as only having a small locating flange on the underside, so the flat topped head on your engine has very little 'meat' for the comp. screw to locate in. It might be worthwhile verifying this and maybe get someone to turn up a substitute in line with the drawings and other pics? Given the size (2.2cc) of the engine, I'm pretty sure the comp. screw will be like most others of that era and have a BA thread. If you think it needs replacing, PAW can probably supply one for under a tenner.

Nice flange! (?) Did you turn it up yourself?

You might want to try an O.S. G5 plug. I've removed the ign. unit (and battery) from my Moki 210 (2S) conversion and replaced the park plug with one of these. All the simplicity of glow combined with the (relative) cheapness of petrol. It runs a bit lumpier at the bottom, but I haven't spent any time dialling it in.

Chris, I accept I'm probably being illogical and old fashioned, but I'd run a mile from an electronic switch. You yourself mentioned points of failure - how many components in that switch? Give me metal to (heavy) metal anytime! We had a power failure problem with our Club trainer recently - the guy who fitted it out was using a LiPo and BEC for power. Solution then was to dispense with both and use a NiMH and an XT30 'making' plug in the circuit.

Yeah, I was looking at it from the point of view of there being not much to show for the expenditure of so much blood and treasure!

Well you would say that - you just passed! I gave it a bash yesterday (no swotting) and failed, so obviously I'm inclined to think the whole thing is a bit of an imposition! ? (I'm happy I didn't fail on anything which was hitherto looked upon as common sense, just on weights (shouldn't they now be in lbs an ozs?) and 'woke' stuff like worrying about somebody else's privacy.)

I tend to use the same switches over many years as well! If it ain't broke... Wouldn't you feel sick if you swapped out a known good 'un which was technically past its sell-by date, only to fit a new one which failed after a few flights? The switch that came with my old McGregor gear could be taken apart to clean the contacts. It was the most reliable part of the system...

I did the bigger Welch plug! ? The vids make it look easy. You think they are going to be fairly soft and that you can easily push a pointy tool in. Mine was horribly hard and I had to force the issue with a small hammer. It's as well they're not re-usable 'cos when the blighter came out it pinged across the workshop....