DOH!

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

We all have those moments - you know the ones where you're happily pottering around in the workshop then suddenly it hits you,...that realisation that you have just done something really daft. Something that is not only wrong, its so wrong its going to make a load of extra work for you putting it right!!

Some examples are well known of course - so well known its probably true that most of us have done them, these popular faux pas would include...making two identical fuselage sides instead of a left and right pair,....gluing the tailplane into a slot and then realising you haven't put the elevator joiner in place and now you can't fit it in,....building the entire wing and then realising you have no way of feeding the aileron servo lead through it. All these are well known.

This afternoon I think I managed a new one! I was instaling the aileron servos in a model and wanted to make up the clevis and control rods etc. Obviously I needed to centralise the servos so I could get the length of the pushrods right. Usually I'd use a servo tester to do this - but I lent mine to a mate a week ago. No problem, I'll just set up the Rx with a gash ESC to power the servos.

Ah, Rx isn't bound, no big probs. I get a 3s Lipo and an old 20A ESC out of the box (they are not the ones for the model but that doesn't matter). I need to bind the Rx, "oh come on I haven't go all day",..... I turn on the Tx, and bind the Rx,......thus neatly overwriting the bind on whatever model happens to come up on the Tx, what flew last yesterday - ie the Wots Wot. Oh No!

DAMN!!!!!! Grrrrrrr!!!! . Already in a hurry (that's prpbably part of the reason this happened) now I have to "time out" while I take the wings off the Wots Wot (not trivial) to get at its Rx so I can correctly rebind it to the model in the Tx. 40 minutes by the time that was all done,...then I could get back to binding the new model to a new memory slot in the Tx which is what of course what I should have done in the first place!!

So that's my stupid act of the day - whats the best totally pointless, completely avoidable, time waster you have managed then?

BEB

Edited By Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator on 15/05/2016 18:54:38

[Keith Evans 3]

With difficulty , half covering an already balsa locked fuselage , only to discover I had not taken the backing off the Solarfilm ! ! !

[cymaz]

Checking a model in the field. Oh ailerons reversed....Hell, how did that happen ? Reversed ailerons - Damn now the throws are all wrong and they are not centering ....

.......

......oops wrong model

[cymaz]

Got the engine to start on the prime but wouldn't run.....primed it, ran, stopped......primed it,ran,stopped

.....

......

...fuel it up ,you turnip

[PatMc]

Mixed epoxy then wondered why it was taking such a long time to go off.

Equal parts resin with resin mix doesn't make a strong bond.

[leccyflyer]

Built my first low winger just exactly the same as I'd built my previous high wingers - with the aileron servo underneath the wing.

Didn't like the paint job on a latex pilot, so cleaned it off with white spirit. The pilot's head instantly swelled up like the Mekon. Threw him in the bin, but next day the swelling had gone down and he survived.

Tidying up after a lengthy late night soldering session carefully placed the still hot iron on the stove to cool down and then turned round and equally carefully picked up the spiral wound wire soldering iron stand to put it away- picking it up by the white hot wire coil. The scars are still there.

Disconnected the bare ended charging leads on a Hitec charger rather than disconnecting the plug. Okay it was only a 4.8v receiver pack but as the wires touched, welded themselves together and glowed I went into a break dance routine trying to let go of the melting plastic on the pack.

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Jeez and they let you fly...

Not workshop I'm o.k in there, going fields another matter though..wrong wing, no wing tube, no tx, forgot my lipos and I once forgot my flask

John

[Robin Kearney]

Whilst removing the connector from a new 6s pack which arrived without my preferred connector, I hastily grabbed the wire cutters and snipped through both wires at once. The resultant spark was quite something!

[IanN]

I don't wish to offend anyone's sensibilities, so give due warning that anyone of a delicate disposition may want to skip this entry

Being a civilised sort of a chap I have a kettle in the workshop, and always take some milk with me to ensure that the tea and coffee keeps flowing during building sessions. This inevitably means that nature sometimes calls, and I then have to return to the house. That is no problem when the weather has been moderate, but the workshop is at the bottom of the garden and has no paved access. Not to put too fine a point on it the lawn down at that end is an absolute mudbath for most of the winter, and could give the Somme a run for its money whenever it's particularly wet.

So my "alternative arrangements" consist of an empty gallon fuel bottle and - of course - some disinfectant hand wipes, thus meaning that I can answer the call without leaving the shed. So, no need for all the palaver of slipping and sliding through the mud, getting soaked in the rain, and then having to take wellies off at the kitchen door, get told off for letting the wind and rain in whilst swmbo is watching Downton, etc etc etc. And just to complete the virtuous circle, the "by product" gets regularly emptied onto the compost heap which, as any google search will tell you, adds valuable nitrogen and is recommended by many horticulturalists. So, win win!

This arrangement has served me very well for a no of years until this January when whilst answering the call I suddenly thought "hang on, this bottle seems a little heavy, I'm sure I emptied it yesterday".

It was only at that point that I realised I was "topping up" a less than half used gallon bottle of Southern Modelcraft's finest 10% Synthetic

[Pete B]

A rush of nothing to the head when soldering an XT60, polarity reversed, onto a brand-new 60A ESC and then watching the magic smoke appear when I connected the Lipo....

Pete

[Mike Blandford]

BEB, interesting! With all my transmitters (open source firmware) it is only the Rx that "remembers" the bind, never the Tx, so even though I might bind another receiver to a model, the original remains bound!

Mike.

[Darrell Woodward]

Built five Warmonger vintage combat models to completion inside a week.

I went to a party on the Friday night, came home Saturday morning very smashed and noticed I'd built them with the asymmetry the wrong way round!

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[bouncebounce crunch]

Two left wings.

4 Sig Koverall, doped, primed and painted built up ailerons, when attaching to wings realised the tops were actually the bottoms. so that was many hours for nothing.

[Dave Hopkin]

After lots of sanding etc... deciding that it would be a good idea to bench test a motor to find out what prop to use....

Screwed motor to test bed, fitted 16" prop, connected ans ESC, plugged it into a RX switched on TX. plugged in the watt meter, plugged LiPo.... listen to ESC arm, open throttle a touch to check rotation direction - thats ok.

So lets open her up to see if I get the 900 Watts advertised.......... I can hear motor spooling up but somehow the world has vanished in a sawdust and general crap whiteout.................. I looked like a bloody snowman when I staggered out of the shed coughing and spluttering and just to add the icing on the SHMBO just happens to be watching from the Kitchen window, trying hard not to laugh.............

[Dave Hopkin]

Arriving at the field with a fuselage and a wing - sadly from different planes.....

Locking my car keys in the boot of the car while packing up at the end of the day.....

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

Posted by Mike Blandford on 15/05/2016 21:52:00:

BEB, interesting! With all my transmitters (open source firmware) it is only the Rx that "remembers" the bind, never the Tx, so even though I might bind another receiver to a model, the original remains bound!

Mike.

 

Er,....are you telling me that in OpenTx systems binding the same memory location to another Rx has no effect on the original? ie it would still be bound?

Because if you are then things are even worse than I thought!!! You see I use Taranis (OpenTx) so that means the "rebind" was a double waste of time because I didn't need to do it!!!!! Oh hell!

Do you ever get the feeling it really isn't your day!

BEB

Edited By Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator on 15/05/2016 22:12:35

[PatMc]

Posted by Pete B - Moderator on 15/05/2016 21:43:21:

A rush of nothing to the head when soldering an XT60, polarity reversed, onto a brand-new 60A ESC and then watching the magic smoke appear when I connected the Lipo....

Pete

Ditto, except I changed a battery from 4mm bullets to XT60. Results below :

Also, about 4 years ago managed to connect a 3s lipo to a 8s nicad instead of the intended ESC when doing a bench test. More evidence :

The lipo survived unscathed but the nicad went belly up.

[Bob Cotsford]

Posted by Mike Blandford on 15/05/2016 21:52:00:

BEB, interesting! With all my transmitters (open source firmware) it is only the Rx that "remembers" the bind, never the Tx, so even though I might bind another receiver to a model, the original remains bound!

Mike.

 

I think stripping a model in order to unnecessarily rebind a receiver might be high on the list

Another one for two left wings from a plan where only one wing half is shown.

Arriving at the field with the 'other' tx which is still 35MHz while all the models are 2.4.

Correct fuselage, correct wings, correct tx, incorrect wing joiner.

Filled the sugar bowl with tea - no, not loose leaf destined for the caddy but brewed tea from the pot. Waste not want not, it may be why I'm well on my way to diabetes

Edited By Bob Cotsford on 15/05/2016 22:18:17

[Andy G.]

O.k. we've probably all built 2 left wings....... I went one better than that and built 3 left wings!!! And, to add insult to injury on the third flight I broke a wing, guess which one?. Yep, you guessed, the Damn right one..

[Mike Blandford]

Posted by Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator on 15/05/2016 22:09:39:

Posted by Mike Blandford on 15/05/2016 21:52:00:

BEB, interesting! With all my transmitters (open source firmware) it is only the Rx that "remembers" the bind, never the Tx, so even though I might bind another receiver to a model, the original remains bound!

Mike.

Er,....are you telling me that in OpenTx systems binding the same memory location to another Rx has no effect on the original? ie it would still be bound?

Because if you are then things are even worse than I thought!!! You see I use Taranis (OpenTx) so that means the "rebind" was a double waste of time because I didn't need to do it!!!!! Oh hell!

Do you ever get the feeling it really isn't your day!

BEB

Edited By Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator on 15/05/2016 22:12:35

Yes, binding the same memory location to another Rx has no effect on the original, it is the receiver that "remembers" the bind. Indeed, if you use a X8R receiver you may bind one, using telemetry, responding to channels 1-8, then bind another, not using telemetry, and responding to channels 9-16 on the servo outputs. Both receivers work giving you 16 servo outputs.

There is no feedback from the XJT module (internal or external) to the firmware, so this is the XJT/X8R operation rather than a function of the open source firmware.

Mike.

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

Yes of course!! I knew about the 16 channel two Rx bind so I should have worked this out! Grrr!

So I claim the prize for doing a daft thing in correcting what I believed was a daft thing but while it was a daft thing it was an ineefectual daft thing and so didn't matter! That must be the ultimate.

I'm going to bed,....tomorrow has to be better - I hope!

BEB

PS The only positive to come out of this is some great stories!

Edited By Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator on 15/05/2016 23:22:07

[Fredrum]

My brand new model took me well over a year to build. It had been flown once on a borrowed receiver as the one I put in it was faulty. Bought a new receiver and got it all plugged in and was showing my daughter how everything worked. She asked if I could put the propeller on so she could see it going round so I obliged. At this point I noticed that the rudder was reversed so I went into the programming menu on the Taranis which allows you to change the values from -100 to +100 by pressing the + & - buttons together thereby reversing the direction of the servo.

Unfortunately I mustn't have hit them at exactly the same time because the menu skipped up to the throttle channel and reversed the direction of the throttle stick. The model went instantly to full throttle, took off across the floor and hit a chair. The battery was the spare which I just put in for testing and I hadn't got around to sticking the velcro on so it shot forward, pushing the cowl into the propeller causing some damage. The front of the model was torn off with the motor attached to the firewall and part of the underside sheeting. Just finished the repairs last night.

[Geoff S]

This happened over 60 years ago when I was helping out in the workshop of the family TV business. I fitted a mains plug to a length of mains lead, then plugged it in before starting to strip the other end to solder it into a radio on/off switch. Dad wasn't too pleased at the total mess I'd made to the cutting edges of his expensive sidecutters. Amazingly I never felt a thing but I blew the workshop fuses comprehensively.

I also once topped up my motor cycle battery with distilled water from a Winchester bottle - except it was the bottle of carbon tetrochloride not the distilled water. Totally knackered the battery!

Geoff

[cymaz]

And they still let us fly telling tales like these.