Never mind the weather - who has been flying, then?

[GrumpyGnome]

Recently, I have spent some time in my garage................. which is where I store models that I don't currently fly, but might - they may have been stripped of equipment, or be damaged, or replaced by something better, or I have become fed up of something - like the twist 'n' turn retracts of a Corsair.  Typically, they just stay there.

 

However, I spotted a Durafly Spitfire, and an FMS Typhoon, which were there for a reason I can't remember......... I got them out, checked/replaced dodgy kit and decided to fly them before a proper refurb.  Long winded preamble....

 

This morning, I walked the dogs, then took the Durafly Spitfire to the field. 

 

I'd forgotten what a joy to fly it is!  I deffo need some better 3S packs though as some gave less than sparkling performance.

 

 

It's as heavily weathered as Ron's Tempest.  All natural, where the Foam Armour, paint and decals have peeled off!

 

I'd best get on with fixing the cosmetic issues.... and work out how to fix the foam headrest which seems to have split in two! I'll have to hack the canopy off, which is a shame as it's fitted beautifully.

 

If you get offered a used Durafly Spitfire 24, snap it up, It's an excellent flier, even on cheap 3S 2200 packs.

 

 

[Futura57]

34 minutes ago, GrumpyGnome said:

Recently, I have spent some time in my garage................. which is where I store models that I don't currently fly, but might - they may have been stripped of equipment, or be damaged, or replaced by something better, or I have become fed up of something - like the twist 'n' turn retracts of a Corsair.  Typically, they just stay there.

 

However, I spotted a Durafly Spitfire, and an FMS Typhoon, which were there for a reason I can't remember......... I got them out, checked/replaced dodgy kit and decided to fly them before a proper refurb.  Long winded preamble....

 

This morning, I walked the dogs, then took the Durafly Spitfire to the field. 

 

I'd forgotten what a joy to fly it is!  I deffo need some better 3S packs though as some gave less than sparkling performance.

 

 

It's as heavily weathered as Ron's Tempest.  All natural, where the Foam Armour, paint and decals have peeled off!

 

I'd best get on with fixing the cosmetic issues.... and work out how to fix the foam headrest which seems to have split in two! I'll have to hack the canopy off, which is a shame as it's fitted beautifully.

 

If you get offered a used Durafly Spitfire 24, snap it up, It's an excellent flier, even on cheap 3S 2200 packs.

 

 

Yes, I had one of those Spitfires for over 10 years. After touching up the paint work here and there it looked as good as new. Probably had over 200 flights and never crashed or even had a hard landing. The retracts still worked perfectly as did all the original servos. I reluctantly sold it for £75 last year to clear some space. The numpty totalled it a week later on his first flight. I was gutted when I heard. I should have kept it.

[Erfolg]

I have just returned from an Italian sojourn, where the weather was everything that the UK isn't, in spite of global warming. Two days before my departure, I went to the field, with a degree of angst. Why, sometime in the past in similar circumstances, I had a fly away, I have also managed to crash a model, that could only be partially retrieved, or was it bits lost? I am not superstitious, these days there is no wood on car dashboards, where is wood look a like, many models are now foam, how can you touch wood?

 

Like many modellers I have a stock of models that need test flying after a rebuild, repair,  or a new model. The grass has been water logged for many months, the grass as high as an "elephants eye". The grass had its third cut in as many weeks, although there was some rivulets of grass that had missed the grass box.

 

So how did it go, my new ply bodied Wot4 was flown by me for the first time, after a number of test flights by the best flyer in the club, it was initially very wrong, after the third iteration of various mods. Now it scooted across the strip, into the air and flew as old. It seems my reassembly of the original body and copy was not very good. setting the wing at 0-0 to the tailplane cured all. This is what I normally do anyway, such poor draughtsmanship, lead to a gross error, I should have engaged brain, is this reasonable, the wing set at +10 degrees to tailplane must be wrong. Anyway all is well.

 

I then flew my own design, which is a master class of standard ratios and conformity. Perhaps the second time flow, by me. Just as you would expect, normal, no apparent vices, in fact axial rolling with not a hint of a barrel. Hopefully i will become more acquainted. 

 

I then flew my very, very old model, it has been lucky so far.

 

Finally I decided to fly an uprated model, a new more powerful motor. A lot was wrong, one issue was a shortage of power, and poor handling. I will post a little about what the power issue was. All to do with an old Lipo, that appeared to have all the volts you would expect, investigation identified a high internal resistance on one cell. The initial watt draw being 138w, rapidly collapsing to 70 watts, after a second to of closed throttle recovering to about 120w ans so on. A new lipo is now providing +180w for some time.

 

The bee in my bonnet persists our reconstituted  link road is still under construction, should he opened in April now June, still no doubt on programme 4 years into the 2 year ....................................................  blah blah .

 

In general it went well!

 

 

 

[leccyflyer]

2 hours ago, GrumpyGnome said:

Recently, I have spent some time in my garage................. which is where I store models that I don't currently fly, but might - they may have been stripped of equipment, or be damaged, or replaced by something better, or I have become fed up of something - like the twist 'n' turn retracts of a Corsair.  Typically, they just stay there.

 

However, I spotted a Durafly Spitfire, and an FMS Typhoon, which were there for a reason I can't remember......... I got them out, checked/replaced dodgy kit and decided to fly them before a proper refurb.  Long winded preamble....

 

This morning, I walked the dogs, then took the Durafly Spitfire to the field. 

 

I'd forgotten what a joy to fly it is!  I deffo need some better 3S packs though as some gave less than sparkling performance.

 

 

It's as heavily weathered as Ron's Tempest.  All natural, where the Foam Armour, paint and decals have peeled off!

 

I'd best get on with fixing the cosmetic issues.... and work out how to fix the foam headrest which seems to have split in two! I'll have to hack the canopy off, which is a shame as it's fitted beautifully.

 

If you get offered a used Durafly Spitfire 24, snap it up, It's an excellent flier, even on cheap 3S 2200 packs.

 

 

 

Agree completely that the Durafly Spitfire 24 is a very nice flying machine, but in it's original incarnation it's an ugly brute, hardly worthy of the name Spitfire. I got one very cheaply at our club swapmeet a few years ago, despite my antipathy towards the Mk 24, since I'd been told they fly well. The original owner had flown it a lot, but had subjected the aeroplane to a very intense dose of weathering, coating it with copious amounts of black paint. It looked like it had been flown by one of the Bevan Boys, rather than one of the Few. The amount of downthrust had to be seen to be believed.  However on it's maiden flight I was very impressed with the flying characteristics and so set  about refurbishing it as a Seafire XVII and I'm pretty happy with the looks now.

 

 

[Adrian Smith 1]

Lovely morning in Suffolk today with a very light NNE crosswind at 2-5mph. Given the benign conditions I decided to dust off my Pilot RC 67" Slick. I haven't flown it since September last year. Where has the time gone? According to my notes on the last flight the starboard spat came loose, but held until landing. Just needed a bolt tightening and thread lock applied. I was delayed at the field because about this time of year I get some boy racers where the strip is and they kick up all sorts of flint onto the grass Grrrrrr.....! I cleared it off straight away as I don't want to screw up the mower. This happens a few times a year, but fortunately the ground is dry so not much harm done. It seems to happen as the school holidays near when these guys are at a loose end after senior exams and are trying to impress their Molls. Occasionally this occurs on a winters evening in the dark when all the villagers are tucked up and in bed. No police patrols of course.

 

Anyway, onwards and upwards. I made sure my varifocals were clean and set off for some fun.

 

 

 

She is a great little flier and because she is a bit smaller than most of my other squadron I needed to concentrate a bit more! 😬 Anyway a super morning and here's hoping the nice weather will be gone enough to get some more action in. 

 

 

Edited June 18 by Adrian Smith 1

[Ron Gray]

Up at the field right now

 

[Ron Gray]

Oops! It didn’t want to get out of the dolly. 
 

[Ron Gray]

It’s all happening today, flying buddy Chris lost coms and went turf diving

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Cuban8]

Full afternoon's flying yesterday, light winds and broken clouds and comfortably mild for a change here in N.Essex. Only had a few hours to spare so just four batteries worth of flights and so nice to meet up with the chaps who I hadn't seen for months.

Nice.

Edited June 19 by Cuban8

[leccyflyer]

Bright and sunny this morning, albeit with a building crosswind, but decided it was worth a trip to the field and to have a predominantly sports model day, so left most of the warbirds at home.

 

 

Got flights in with my first electric model - the Beeline Models Easy Bee which I've been flying on a fairly regular basis for the past 28 years and has seen more motor and battery combos than any other model in my fleet. Still good as gold and a delight to fly.

 

Then a rare outing for my Webbit. This is my second Webbit and doesn't fly as nicely as my original Webbit, which was the prototype for the breed. Some discussion elsewhere prompted me to get the Webbit out from under the stairs and give it a go. Definitely exhibiting a strong trend to climb at a steep angle into wind -and crosswind as well, as it happens - requiring more than a few clicks of down trim. I think it's the thrustline, so on return to base have stuck a couple of washers under the two top mount bolts and we'll see if that helps.

 

The third model is my electrified MIni Astro Hog, built from the RCM&E free plan, many years ago and originally fitted with an OS .10 FP, into which I've shoehorned a 3s1p 2200mah pack, 3736 brushless motor and a 7x4" prop. She does fly quite quickly, and strangely enough orientation and simply seeing the model was quite challenging in the bright blues skies today, but was impeccably behaved in the blustery wind, apart from needing a wee push to get moving on the grass strip.

[Ron Gray]

5 minutes ago, leccyflyer said:

so left most of the warbirds at home.

Lightweight 🤪

[leccyflyer]

2 minutes ago, Ron Gray said:

Lightweight 🤪

A blustery 8mph crosswind on our 5m wide strip doesn't make for a relaxing warbird flight Ron.  Ending up in the electric fence might be okay for a stir-crazy Ives, but I thought the day suited sprorts models instead.

 

That said I did fly my wee Volantex Spitfire, my SEMFF P-51 and my profile Fatty Me109, all hand launched over the long grass off the runway and though they got thrown about a bit they all came home safely.

[Eric Robson]

Warbirds Hurricane and Tempest today along with my Brian Taylor Corsair. Good flying weather,  mishap with the Tempest not too bad.

[Tosh McCaber]

17 hours ago, leccyflyer said:

Bright and sunny this morning, albeit with a building crosswind, but decided it was worth a trip to the field and to have a predominantly sports model day, so left most of the warbirds at home.

 

 

Got flights in with my first electric model - the Beeline Models Easy Bee which I've been flying on a fairly regular basis for the past 28 years and has seen more motor and battery combos than any other model in my fleet. Still good as gold and a delight to fly.

 

Then a rare outing for my Webbit. This is my second Webbit and doesn't fly as nicely as my original Webbit, which was the prototype for the breed. Some discussion elsewhere prompted me to get the Webbit out from under the stairs and give it a go. Definitely exhibiting a strong trend to climb at a steep angle into wind -and crosswind as well, as it happens - requiring more than a few clicks of down trim. I think it's the thrustline, so on return to base have stuck a couple of washers under the two top mount bolts and we'll see if that helps.

 

The third model is my electrified MIni Astro Hog, built from the RCM&E free plan, many years ago and originally fitted with an OS .10 FP, into which I've shoehorned a 3s1p 2200mah pack, 3736 brushless motor and a 7x4" prop. She does fly quite quickly, and strangely enough orientation and simply seeing the model was quite challenging in the bright blues skies today, but was impeccably behaved in the blustery wind, apart from needing a wee push to get moving on the grass strip.

 

[Tosh McCaber]

Does your squadron never end Leccy??

[leccyflyer]

Just starting to make some minor inroads into the kit mountain that I've accumulated over the part 30 years Tosh, since retiring and at last having some workshop space. Rapidly running out of room on the ready use racks though.

[PDB]

Had a good session with the Arrows Hawk yesterday evening. 👍

 

 

😂

[Paul De Tourtoulon]

The first day of summer, and whatever is this wet stuff doing on the tables, and where on earth has the sun gone to ?,

only two of us on the field.

 

I did some alterations on the falling apart OS.90, carburettor and drilling and tapping out the exhaust as it never had a thread in it.

[RICHARD WILLS]

finally some decent weather . 

Two of my fleet lounging , post operations . (non medical variety ) 

[GrumpyGnome]

That the prototype Mosquito kit Paul.....?

[RICHARD WILLS]

Paul is my middle name , so in reply I would say this . 

As a youngster I was given this advice .

"Anything you say may be written down and used in evidence against you " .

So, for the record I will reply  :  "Ive never seen that Mossie before Officer . I dont know why it's leaning against my car , you're fitting me up like a kipper ".

No further comment . 

I'd like my phone call now please . 

[Alan Hilton]

Don’t worry Richard all the jails are full !!!!!

[GrumpyGnome]

Ni idea

48 minutes ago, RICHARD WILLS said:

Paul is my middle name , so in reply I would say this .

No idea why I called you Paul! I'll blame being out in the sun flying for hours.... sorry.

[RICHARD WILLS]

Ive been called for worse 😬

[Colin Carpenter]

A weird flyaway this morning   High winger take off perfectly normal . Left hand circuit in a clear sky and l/h turn to bring back over patch when ✈️just disappeared to both of us at exactly the same time ?? Had no further sight of it ! Search of long grass for huge distance was unsuccessful. Camera drone pilot offered assistance and it was found about 10 times normal distance away virtually unscathed. It’s got some red on it but ??? We’re booked into Specsavers Monday 😂😂😂Wasn’t radio. Colin