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Frog Jackdaw resurrection.


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I think you are right about the side-valve engine. I may have been confusing it with the sister Triumph Mayflower, which did have the side valve engine with an aluminium head.

Mind you, if you think the 100E was thirsty, a mate of mine back, in the early 70s, had a Humber straight six side-valve! I believe it was around the 3-litre mark, and had an mpg in single figures....!!!

But to get back on topic, good to hear the Jackdaw is coming back to life after its hibernation! Best of luck with the test-flights - though I'm sure you won't need it!

laugh

--

Pete

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Spot on, the Mayflower had a side valve engine. I thought that was a stunning looking car for it’s time, the “razor-edge” styling was classical. Also used for the larger Reknown, but with old-fashioned external headlamps it didn’t look so good. The Mayflower was pioneering because it had an aluminium body. For a while post-war my dad worked at Mulliners in Coventry and they made the bodies. Aluminium is difficult to paint and dad said that there was a huge amount of work in preparing them for painting, by a laborious process called “flatting and rubbing”. They stopped making it in I think 1954 because it cost too much to build, sadly.

I’m out of time to fly this now for a few days because I will be away for a week from tomorrow.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Ihope that this works! First flight in 40 years. Ground was rutted below the thin new grass and acted like chocks on the 2.5” wheels, so I hand launched it. (eat humble pie) It is surprisingly fast, most of this flight is on half-throttle! Took it home afterwards and fitted 3.5’ wheels.

Edited By Colin Leighfield on 30/06/2019 18:13:18

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So the video did work after all! That SS30 Enya has a lot of go, it loops on half throttle and on full bat it really shifts. You can see how it would have been a very competitive aerobat with the aileron wing, it’s pretty nifty with rudder/elevator. Nothing antiquated about the way this flies, it will be earning its keep again! It might be 55+ years old but it’s not superannuated, I will try and get a better video. Hard to think that last time I flew this I was 32/33, now I’m nearly 73! A lot of water has passed under the bridge.

Edited By Colin Leighfield on 30/06/2019 22:46:01

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I took the Jackdaw to Fradley to find out how it gets on with hard runways. There was another reason:- the older friend who kindly gave this to me In I am pretty sure 1971 said that he had bought it from a club friend who had previously acquired it from Dave Wright. I had mentioned this to Dave and he confirmed that he did have one that he later sold, so it rang true. He was there today and was reunited with a plane he hadn’t seen for more than 50 years. He had a go with it and at first struggled with its disinclination to go straight on take-off, but then mastered it and had a long and excellent flight. Here he is with it immediately afterwards! I took a video of all this including our conversation, with the intention of sharing it. However to my mortification I afterwards that I had recorded all of it in slow motion. Does anyone know how I can rectify the speed before sharing it please.d3c7ebdd-8a6e-4142-b490-6ee82a7dac1b.jpeg

Edited By Colin Leighfield on 03/07/2019 22:30:44

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Here is the video of Dave Wright flying the Frog Jackdaw for the first time in more than half a century. He reckons that he built it in 1964, so it is 55 years old. The first two attempts fell victim to its tendency to swerve on take-off, but by the third go it went straight off and he had no trouble with it at all. (I got it spot on on my third attempt later on that afternoon, getting the hang of it now).As a result, the video is quite long, but you can see the sequence of events and invaluable support of fellow SCRCAC club stalwart Barry. Dave goes back a very long way and was well-known for his skill in flying the show models for Jim Davies and flew Jim’s Spitfire in the famous crossing of the English Channel, so many years ago. A true legend! I am kicking myself for accidentally recording this in slo-mo! Playing it back on IMovie at x2 corrects it perfectly. However x2 on YouTube leaves it slightly slow, I think it is only the effect on the speech that makes it noticeable. If anyone has the answer, please let me know.
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I just had another look at this and although I have saved the x2 speed on Youtube it still seems to be playing at the lower speed on here, I don’t know why. Better to look at it directly on Youtube, it seems. My apologies for being so half-soaked. Those many people who are more tech-savvy than me might have the answers.

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Without knowing how it was shot or transferred, its difficult to advise about the speed problem. It seems to be a .mov file. Did you process / upload it from a Mac? Might be worth installing Avidemux ( avidemux )

Scroll down to find the Mac version. Its a very capable Swiss army knife for video! Load your raw camera footage into it, cut as required, and save as an mkv (matroska) file. Avidemux is not a video editor, but it can be used for "cut only" editing, and things like changing resolution, re-formatting, etc. I don't know what format your camera spits out. MP4 is the normal video format for youtube these days, but its very fussy about the format of the video and audio files. Matroska is much better and far less fussy! Set the video and audio to "copy" and there will be no loss of quality.

However, it looks to me like your Jackdaw does what mine does: swerve to the right as the tail comes up!

I thought it was the prop catching in the grass, but that can't be the case with yours! Must just be a characteristic of the model!

The ones I recall flying "back in the day" all had to be hand-launched, as our strip was not suitable for ROGs! This clearly by-passed the problem! wink

--

Pete

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Thank you Peter, I will look at that. The video recording was done on myTomTom Bandit, fixed on the side of my cycle helmet. Downloaded onto my iMac. Putting the video into iMovie and setting the speed at x2 puts it spot on, but I haven’t understand how to get that into YouTube, or anywhere else for that matter. I am not very good at this sort of thing.

The odd thing is that on both Dave’s and mine third attempt it went off straight as an arrow! You get there eventually. It flies very well and is sprightly, to say the least. Probably way over-powered with the Enya SS30. It doesn’t seem to be aware of its age at all!

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Its possible iMovie did something strange to it - maybe de-interlaced and doubled the frame rate! Or maybe the Bandit works a progressive 50 or 60 fields a second. Whatever, put it into Avidemux, set audio and video to "copy", and output format to mkv (matroska). the saved file should have a .mkv suffix.

Hopefully that will sort it!

--

Pete

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I have downloaded Avidemux and it does the trick. However when I try to do something with it I get asked to pay for an upgrade! Similarly I can do it in IMovie, which I have also downloaded but haven’t worked out how to get it into YouTube. I will get there somehow, but I am the archetypal I/T dimbo, I am afraid!

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Towards the top left corner is a small disk icon. Simply click on that, and it will open up a dialogue asking for a file name and folder. Remember to add the .mkv suffix for a matroska file.

You shouldn't need to adjust the speed - I'm really puzzled why that is happening! Also, I've been using it for years in all three versions (Linux, Windows and Mac) and never once have I been prompted for payment!

Do you have a dropbox (or similar) account? If so, send me a link to the file and I'll have a look at it. There sounds to be something strange about it!

--

Pete

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Thank you for that Peter, I will have another look. The reason for the speed problem is me, I accidentally recorded them in slow motion! I haven’t used the Bandit very much and didn’t look at the settings before recording, after I found that it was in slo-mo! The speed adjustment in both Avidemux and IMovie make it easy to correct, I’ll have another look at what I am doing wrong this morning.

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Its certainly a lot quicker than mine! But like mine, it doesn't seem to want to slow down on the glide! (Though in the video below, I was landing downhill in a flat calm!)

And yes, the video plays fine now!

If you look down towards the end of P4 of this thread, you'll find the video of my Jackdaw's maiden flight:

Jackdaw

Since then, I've looped and rolled it. The rolls (on aileron) are leisurely, but look good. I do need to dive it a bit to build up enough speed for a loop! That ASP 30 FS is not particularly powerful!

--

Pete

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It looks great! The plan does show the aileron wing option but I don’t wish to change it at this stage in its life, it is what it is and the only effect really is not being able to do a tidy roll! I note that you have got your front dowel for the wing bands set in a different position.

With the Enya it loops on half throttle. I remember that with the OS30 it needed a bit of a dive to do a loop. Overall it is what it was designed to be, a relatively quick aerobatic plane by the standards of its time, with a smooth response to control movements and no ballooning. I absolutely love it. It is definitely not going back into the garage roof! The renewal of its relationship with Dave, who built it very well all of those years ago, is icing on the cake.

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