Andy Harris

This bad boy replete with wing bags and bling accessories arrived this morning after numerous customs delays and some outrageous shipping/customs charges. All looks in pristine order and even I think the colour scheme is in-yer-face. Going through the manual, aileron fitting is different and the language quite Australian; "The CG is not theorectical, we tested lots and its between 130.001mm and 130.005mm"   Just in the process of ordering motor/servos etc. Since I might have the first 'X' version on the forum I could bloggerise the build and maiden.  Andy

This would be the standard icon for "Whatever you are dragging - you can't drop here"   So we would need to know whether this is a laptop with a pressure sensitive pad.  What would make sense is that the pointer is moved from outside to inside the message box dragging whatever it started on.   Can the user operate normally if the pointer/mouse is released once inside the message area?   Cheers Andy 

Dan   The Electric Shock is a very useful piece of kit.  Mine was my first model and served very well as a basic trainer.  Make sure you keep it light and it'll reward you.   Having both the Addiction and the Shock I would say that the Addiction is better for learning 3D moves, it can fly slower and is easily recovered from any move that gets out of shape.   Both the Addiction and the ES need only a football pitch of space.  Rumour has it that the bigger Addiction is waiting for me somewhere in a UK customs depot.  Enjoy Andy

If I got 25mm instead of 19mm travel I'd be quite happy. One always seems to use all the available deflection anyway...  Just call 25mm high rates and use d/r to set low rates.  Andy

Well, the Harmony has arrived, well I think it has.   I have a box of Balsa.  No Plan, no U/C, no canopy.   Oh err, what have I let myself in for?   I'm going to see if there is another pack I should have bought.   Andy 

Well the UMX beast arrived in its BNF glory, but sans manual.   I tested the battery in the position shown in various videos but felt it to be stodgy and nose heavy.    A little Googling suggested that the CoG should be 18mm from the leading edge.   In my case that meant placing the battery well down inside the fuselage.   This improved the performance but not to the level of the 4-Site.  In particular the UMX beast seems prone to tip stalling.  I'm using a DX7SE with 30 expo on everything.   Outside with room to move the UMX Beast seems much nicer. It runs a 7.4V 120mA battery so its lively.  It'll fly a 1/4 throttle but I have to be careful with tight turns otherwise it'll drop a wing.   I'll experiment some more and report back.   Andy

Easy     Precision Aerobatics Andy    

Some models will have a more stressful life than others.  Even with ARTFs there is a learning process for construction.   My first Addiction lasted 300+ flights, as a model they are hard to crash, but when they hit the ground they are almost irrecoverable.   My Dualsky 260 wrecked itself through aileron flutter, probably because of a build error on my part.   Experience does not mean less crashing, some of our most experienced club members have a far higher crash rate than I do.  They push the limit so much more than I do.   I admire those that get straight back in the air with great gusto after a crash.  For me, a crash will affect my flying for months, I still shudder when I remember my Saphira spiralling down with no radio link (it landed in the middle of a sports track).   Martin has a proper point to make; good club training is really really important, we need newcomers to crash in the right places.  Good clubs support newcomers through these incidents. 

You may wish to check out:  http://vimeo.com/15479617  Jeb Corliss falls with grace.  Andy

Yippee!   I hunted through my bookmarks and find the reference to the shopping cart.   And, more to the point I found the route to finding the kit.    it WAS HERE, there was a Belair ad that I followed!  Here is the Link: http://www.belairkits.com/Productdetail.asp?Id=829  I've spoken to Leon, the order did go through, the kits has been produced and will be on its way to me.    First step on the route from ARTF(er) to builder .....  Andy

Yes, that's what I thought, so I've been through my bank statement, I used a system in our office, so I'll walk through the history on that when I'm next in the office. I expect the transaction will go through when it is shipped, I was just after chasing up shipment dates and checking the order went through. I also remember it was site that did both TN and PM designs.  I remember that I found a kit in moments over lunch! Cheers ...

Hi Forum Last week I ordered a Harmony kit for around £60, I thought it was odd at the time that I didn't get a confirmation email.  Now I can't remember where I ordered it from, I know I found the kit in seconds with Google and now I can't remember the search I used to locate it.  I didn't make the order on my system so I can't go back through history.  I thought it was SLEC but they don't appear to do the kit. Cheers   Andy

Now thats interesting.   I wonder if any CAA rules were broken....  the url goes to a godaddy holding page.   

3.5mm is size used to fix light switches, sockets etc. Regards  Andy

Eric  may the '4' be back with you.  At your age you'll be needing a good 3D plane next...

I smell raticius novegicius ...   I can see elevons in that video.....

Cheers Tim     I found I could stop them with just light finger pressure.  I have the 15-25 ones as well.  I've been testing them with a Turnigy servo tester.     My Mossie is 2.5Kg so at 7lbs I should be in ...     They are too short for the Mossie, but I'm hatching a cunning plan to extend them and make them look a little better at the same time.    ...Andy 

TIm    I've got some of those retracts, I thought they'd replace the the less than effecttive round the house linkages on a BH Mosquito.    Having tested them I wonder if they are strong enough.   Regards     Andy 

Looks like proper fun. Perhaps we ought have a category for competitions:     F1ZW   

I've just bought the 25 version, I'll let you know when I get them!

@Steve W-O   Yes you are correct, Hobbyists are excluded from CE regulations (but not all the other regs)  The 2nW is relatively new part of the 2009 transitional standards for domestic products.  You can be 10db above this for 'Office use'.  You'll find that most plasma TV's use the 'Office Use' standard.  Here is a guide from the lab we use http://www.dbtechnology.co.uk/regulations.pdf  You are also right that mostly it is unworkable, what happens in practice is that a competitor has one of your products tested in a lab and contacts the trading standards authority,   We use a variety of radios to 'pre-test' before we spend money in the lab.  I'm staggered by the noise that comes from major brand telephones/PCs etc.  What triple hacks me off is that all these standards cannot be downloaded for free - we have to pay for them!  Are they not created by our own goverments? Should not consumers be able to check what a standard is?  How do you know if a standard is broken if you can't read the standard.   I've been searching for EN 55016-1-4 (A1) as an example of how emissions are tested,  I can find the first 6 pages, but not the actual meat which is the valuable bit!

@Steve W-O Yes you are definitely breaking the law (unless everything you make is for your own use).  You could use the design file approach, however you'd need to be sure that your equipment was not radiating more than 2 nano Watts of power in any spectrum it shouldn't be,  As a guide, you'll not be able to detect 2nW of radiation without going to a chamber. If you assemble enclosures where each functional part is CE approved you may be OK. However Tiny computers did not survive litigation when they used the same argument (we assemble PCs from approved parts).  In my case its been there done it, got the kickings.  Our company has put together kit that that wouldn't make a short wave radio placed on it squeak, we think we've got it right, but down at the chamber its a different story.  It costs about £600 for a morning of emissions testing, it takes us about £2100 of testing to get a two processor multi-clock product through,  Sometimes the process feels like black magic, the owner of the labs pops in and suggests changing the brand of a capacitor and hey presto a spike disappears!  Its a bit like whack-a-mole but when done you have an independent report to say it was right, and if you design electronic kit you'll most likely find its in your professional indemnity insurance requirements.

I'm thinking:   600W electric  Pale green with roundels  Some letters and numbers and then passing the Harmony off as a rare experiment Spitfire than flew properly ...   Andy

@BEB   I'm making a distinction between RX devices and TX devices.  TX devices fall under a range of laws for which I'm unfamiliar.    I'm also keeping my comments to just what I know about CE marking, I reckon I'll have to look up the definition of 'agent' in the book, however as previously stated the book can induce near fatal levels of boredom.  I'll have to see how committed I am to this great forum before I go to the room where the book is!  Andy