Radio Queen.

[Phil Green]

A nice period radio would complement the Radio Queen & make the whole experience more enjoyable, have you thought about a refit or a reproduction? These old girls dont look right propping up a DX18

You might not fancy S/C but a reeds set or very early propo would be more appropriate, lots of ideas on mode-zero

Cheers
Phil

[Ernst Grundmann]

@Brokenenglish.

Our reference is the model that crossed the channel. As far as I knew this was the original model but thanks to you all I have tons more info and I now know this was not the original model. Our thought was that this model was purposely designed for the flight across the channel and I thought so too.

This put things in an other perspective and also makes things a lot more difficult. Obvious things like the tail skid and some other small outside things will be easy to duplicate. But details inside and other changes that are not documented can not or very difficult be copied.

Your video is not visibel for me the "owner" must give me permission to view it. ????

 

@Phil Green.

We have been thinking about an original transmitter and receiver. These are no longer available but I am pretty sure that we have enough electronics people in our club that will be able to build a working transmitter and receiver. That is if we still can get the parts we need, that can be a problem.

But there is a bigger problem with this old equipment. As I mentioned before there are much, much, very much more radio signals in the air right now. The receiver is absolutely not selective enough to differentiate between all these signals. The receiver will go crazy en control over the aircraft will be very tricky. This is why we will use 35MHz equipment.

Maybe later I can explain more about why we choose this frequency about 4 years ago for our escapades.

Also I want to apologize for my English. This is not my native language so sometimes I will make mistakes.

Edited By Ernst Grundmann on 04/06/2020 14:06:49

[Martin_K]

Posted by brokenenglish on 04/06/2020 10:05:57:

Finally, something you'll enjoy. I've extracted a short video sequence ......

In confirmation of what Ernst says, YouTube reports that the video is "Private". I cannot play it. I have no YouTube account to sign in with.

[brokenenglish]

Posted by Martin_K on 04/06/2020 14:44:19:

Posted by brokenenglish on 04/06/2020 10:05:57:

Finally, something you'll enjoy. I've extracted a short video sequence ......

In confirmation of what Ernst says, YouTube reports that the video is "Private". I cannot play it. I have no YouTube account to sign in with.

Oh dear! Humble apologies to all.

Martin, I've changed the status from "Private" to "Unlisted". I think it should work now, and it's a great little sequence!
If it still doesn't work, Paste this URL in your browser:  https://youtu.be/MPexNpSfuQQ

And Thanks for reporting it. I can obviously see it OK. I thought "Private" made it available to anyone that I gave the link to, and I thought that posting in the forum was "giving the link".

Just to be sure. Here it is again. Great stuff!

Edited By brokenenglish on 04/06/2020 15:50:16

Edited By brokenenglish on 04/06/2020 15:53:00

Edited By brokenenglish on 04/06/2020 15:57:26

[Martin_K]

Video working now thanks.

The TX aerial is so large the cameraman has to pan up to get it all in shot!

[Ernst Grundmann]

Hello,

Reading the articles you showed me makes me a bit worried. There are quite some differences between the articles.

In one article the wingspan is 6 feet, in the other it is 7 feet. In one article the tanks held 24 ounces in total. In an other article is it 3 pints, a lot more!

In one article the start was good and the model climbed away in a steady climb. In an other article it just barely got in the air and sort of nosedived over the cliff edge. Sid Allen needed all his skills to keep the aircraft under control.

There are more differences but I can not write them all down here. It seems to me that the writers (journalists?) had some problems with telling the real story, this is still the case now a days I am afraid.

This makes it more difficult for us to build the model as much as possible the same as the model that crossed the channel.

Thanks so far and if there is something you want to know please ask.

I will keep an eye on this forum and if I need help again I will put the question(s) here hoping you can help me as you have done the last couple of days.

Also I will keep you informed about the progress of our project.

Edited By Ernst Grundmann on 04/06/2020 21:46:24

Edited By Ernst Grundmann on 04/06/2020 21:47:47

[brokenenglish]

Ernst, as I mentioned before, you're a victim of various people writing "any nonsense" over the years and, as you say, it's continuing today.

Anyway, to try to sort you out.

The Radio Queen wing span is 82".

The channel crossing plane was basically the ED kit model (now the Ben Buckle plan), with modifications for the long range flight. Again, as I mentioned before, these modifications are not properly documented.

Concerning the actual flight, and the modifications, you should accept the report in the Aeromodeller December 1954. This gives a lot of details and, as far as I know, is 100% correct (the information and photos were provided by Sid Allen and George Honnest-Redlich, who were the major operators present.
This report describes the celluloid fuel tanks in the wings and various other things.

Finally, my own advice would be to stop reading any nonsense and to stay with the original report and plan.

[Phil Green]

Posted by Ernst Grundmann on 04/06/2020 14:02:34:

@Phil Green.

We have been thinking about an original transmitter and receiver. These are no longer available but I am pretty sure that we have enough electronics people in our club that will be able to build a working transmitter and receiver. That is if we still can get the parts we need, that can be a problem.

But there is a bigger problem with this old equipment. As I mentioned before there are much, much, very much more radio signals in the air right now. The receiver is absolutely not selective enough to differentiate between all these signals. The receiver will go crazy en control over the aircraft will be very tricky. This is why we will use 35MHz equipment.

Maybe later I can explain more about why we choose this frequency about 4 years ago for our escapades.

Sorry if I wasnt clear Ernst, our repro sets and refits are on either 2.4g or 35mhz.

Take a look at just a few of the many reproductions made by our members:
www.modelflying.co.uk/albums/member_album.asp?a=53456

There are many more on the mode-zero forum and www.singlechannel.co.uk

If you cant find an old radio to convert, a reproduction project like this would complement the Radio Queen perfectly

Cheers
Phil

 

 

Edited By Phil Green on 05/06/2020 12:23:29

[Ernst Grundmann]

In our club there is also a group of people that do exactly the same thing. One of our members has designed and made several singel channel transmitters that use normal 2.4GHz transmitter modules and receivers. It is great to see this working perfectly and to see how model airplanes where controlled in the fifties and sixties.

But this is not what we have in mind. As I wrote we really have checked if it was possible to build a transmitter and receiver exactly the same as used in 1954. The first problem we encountered was getting the important parts like the tubes and the reeds. This proved quite difficult but there was somebody who claimed he could find or make the tubes but for a price! How much I don't (want to) know.
The next problem was getting a licence to use it. Normally it is not allowed to use a home build radio control transmitter here in The Netherlands. Only in special cases one might get a licence.
The next and biggest problem is the very poor selectivity of the receiver and the very large bandwidth the transmitter uses. One transmitter would almost completely "swamp" the whole frequency band used. Because of this the chances we will get permission to use it are very close to zero.

Al in al we use 35MHz Futaba equipment that has proven to be very reliable. Flying with only rudder and elevator trim would complement this project but not every member of our club can control a model this way.
Maybe I should explain more about what we do and how we do it but this will go very much off-topic! Should I start a new topic for this in a more suitable part of this forum?