The Big Question ?

[Outrunner]

3 minutes ago, Paul De Tourtoulon said:

Found it, 25€ the 15 metres, thanks Ron,,,

 

 

https://www.intermodel.fr/film-entoilage-decoration/8219-film-de-lamination-38-transparent-15m-intermodel-epp-film-transparent-laminer-lamination-38-38micron-38-micron.html

Wow, 25euro for 15m, you should find a 100m  roll for that on eBay 

[Mr Fro]

51 minutes ago, Paul De Tourtoulon said:

Where on earth do you live,  do you look like a Cyclops,,,😄

I'm in Suffolk but have also tried Norfolk clubs too. I've only lived in Suffolk a decade so they probably still see me as a foreigner. 😁

 

I can't imagine why they all give me the same response, my personality isn't that abrasive.

[Paul De Tourtoulon]

Some places are funny, it took me a year to be accepted at Brightlingsea, even though I am from Sowfend, but immediately in the Sunderland / Newcastle area,,,

[RICHARD WILLS]

I think the problem is , if I might be so bold , Mr Fro , is that you are meeting the wrong people . 

We really should try and introduce you to Mr Too. 

I'm sure you'd get on like a house on fire . 

(give or take a bit of backwards and forwards at first , which is to be expected .) 

[Ron Gray]

1 hour ago, Mr Fro said:

I'm in Suffolk but have also tried Norfolk clubs too

Pretty sure you haven't tried our club, Bury Model Flying Club - https://bmfc.bmfa.org our flying sit his on the Norfolk / Suffolk border.

Edited August 16, 2023 by Ron Gray

[Ron Gray]

8 minutes ago, RICHARD WILLS said:

I think the problem is , if I might be so bold , Mr Fro , is that you are meeting the wrong people . 

We really should try and introduce you to Mr Too. 

I'm sure you'd get on like a house on fire . 

(give or take a bit of backwards and forwards at first , which is to be expected .) 

I get on well with their cousins, (twice removed), Cummins and Goins. But then I do ask uncle Arthur who happens to be a contortionist and likes looking up his relations.

Edited August 16, 2023 by Ron Gray

[RICHARD WILLS]

I have to apologise , my Dad was called Frank , so I just cant keep things in . 

What's your excuse Ron ?

 

[Ron Gray]

My father was in the RAF and my mother was Welsh.

[Graham Davies 3]

4 hours ago, Mr Fro said:

I'm somewhat of an outsider being as I inherited a number of planes from my late father-in-law. They're essentially new as in not flown and "in time" I'll get them all put together to sell. However, I'm an engineer and like tiddling about with stuff like that so it shouldn't be an issue building them. Also however, like his cars and boats that I built and sold, I'd like to give them a test before handing them on. This last bit is a problem as (from the perspective of someone who hasn't flown a model before) it's silly difficult to do so.

 

Every club a I've contacted gives me the "You don't know what you're doing, you'll crash, even by building them you'll kill a million babies" speach which is a bit off-putting. I even got a lecture from the bloke in the model shop who told me a I was definitely going to chop my arm off with a prop (I only went in to buy some fuel).

 

This apparent barrier to entry I think puts off a great deal of people. Therefore the liklihood of someone casually buying a plane to give it a go is likely to be low. Furthermore, the likelihood of someone dropping a grand on something they have to spend weeks building is vanishingly small.

 

Yes it would be possible for an enterprising individual to design (or license) a model with a view to generating a production run. That person has to have the kit to either volume produce a skeleton, assemble it & cover it or make up some moulds / formers in order to blow polystyrene / vacuum form / lay up the structural components.

 

All doable but then, as is evident on this thread, different people want different things so said individual is suddenly in for a good bit of investment to service a rather small market. That is unless they produce only a few designs to make them affordable or make everything bespoke in which case things become expensive for the end user.

 

I'm very much in favour of people being able to give stuff a go and I think that if clubs were a bit more open to outsiders coming along to crash a couple of hundred quid worth of their hard earned then there might be a bit more take up of the hobby, thus greater market potential and more players in the market.

I sympathise Mr Fro.

 

When I started many years ago, the same entry barriers existed. It seems that the model fraternity is predisposed to defending the difficulty status!

 

It' IS difficult and crashing is inevitable for most. But it's only a toy airplane at the end of the day. I taught myself, and loved the process of learning, probably BECAUSE it was challenging and difficult, not despite it. Let's face it, nothing that comes easy holds us for long. My main love is music, and after 40 years, I now feel I have mastered about 15% of the guitar, on a good day...

 

You do you, Mr fro. You have every right to make bags of matchwood, interspersed with pieces of your own fingers. After all, isn't that 'engineering'? 😉

 

Graham 

[RICHARD WILLS]

32 minutes ago, Graham Davies 3 said:

I sympathise Mr Fro.

 

When I started many years ago, the same entry barriers existed. It seems that the model fraternity is predisposed to defending the difficulty status!

 

It' IS difficult and crashing is inevitable for most. But it's only a toy airplane at the end of the day. I taught myself, and loved the process of learning, probably BECAUSE it was challenging and difficult, not despite it. Let's face it, nothing that comes easy holds us for long. My main love is music, and after 40 years, I now feel I have mastered about 15% of the guitar, on a good day...

 

You do you, Mr fro. You have every right to make bags of matchwood, interspersed with pieces of your own fingers. After all, isn't that 'engineering'? 😉

 

Graham 

When you say 15% of the guitar , do you mean the strap ?

And Mr Fro ,  take no notice . We had a lovely chap in our club that was so good at crashing that he became synonymous with it . When he died sadly , we named a trophy after him and awarded it every year . Lets face it , we are not airfix modellers . Who else would spend ages making or fixing something then chuck it up in the air !

 

[Don Fry]

13 hours ago, Outrunner said:

Wow, 25euro for 15m, you should find a 100m  roll for that on eBay 

I’ve got a everlasting roll of 30 micron semi Matt. I use it a lot. Currently covering a 2.2 meter Ugli Stick.

A Euro per 5 meters. 40 cm wide.

Give me a shout if you want some Paul.

Edited August 17, 2023 by Don Fry

[David Davis 2]

Mr Fro, this thread is about British manufacturers producing kits at a price which will be attractive to the builder and profitable to the producer. It has morphed into a thread about producing kits of WW2 fighters, eg: Spitfires, Hurricanes, Bf109s, Mustangs etc. I'll come back to this point later.

 

You say that you want to get some of your late father-in-law's models into the air. This is very commendable and I have no wish to dampen your enthusiasm... Do you sense a "but" coming? Well here it is....but, learning to fly a model aircraft is not as easy as it looks. I am a pretty indifferent pilot but if I have one skill above all others, it's that of training beginners how to fly  and after twenty-five years of doing just that I have come to the conclusion that beginners are best off joining a club and learning to fly a high wing monoplane trainer on a "buddy box," which is a system of linking the instructor's transmitter to the trainee's.

 

We don't know which models your late father-in-law built. If they were traditional balsa and ply models like the Keil Kraft Super 60 or the Telemaster, they may well be suitable as a trainer but you will have an emotional attachment to them so perhaps an ARTF (Almost Ready To Fly) trainer may be more suitable. Every beginner I've ever known has crashed while learning including me and if your father-in-law's models were scale models of WW2 fighters, then as a rank beginner, you will not be able to fly them and you will crash. Ask yourself this, "Did they real WW2 fighter pilots learn to fly on fighter aircraft?" No they didn't. Neither will you. They started on something more sedate then went on to an intermediate trainer before going on to an Operational Training School to fly the Spitfires, Hurricanes etc.

 

Even if your father-in-law's models are scale high wing monoplanes like a Cessna or Piper Cub, again I would still not recommend one as a trainer. They are far less robust than a purpose built trainer.

 

Finally, we regularly get inquiries from people who are determined to fly on their own. They build or assemble a model, attempt to fly and crash. They repair the model and try again... and crash. They add a gyro. "What could possibly go wrong?" Even with a device designed to make models more stable, they crash. After a few more repetitions we never hear from them again. Now there are one or two subscribers to these pages who have learned to fly successfully by themselves but they are mostly Old Greybeards like me who started out on free flight and control line models and thus learned something about aerodynamics. They then made a simple powered glider, usually without engine control and guided that around the sky before moving on to more demanding models.

 

There, Mr Fro. I have given you the benefit of my experience.  I have not used capital letters, emoticons or underling to emphasise my points but have sought to express my views in a moderate and restrained manner, unlike your initial post, if you don't mind me saying so. You are free to ignore that experience of course. Most club's are only too keen to accept new members because long established members are dying off! They probably discouraged you from using your father-in-law's models because they were unsuitable for a beginner and if you try to learn to fly using an using an unsuitable model, you'll crash. I can safely put the house on it.

 

Some pictures of the models in question would be helpful.

 

 

[David Davis 2]

Concerning fuel-proof paints, I am going to build David Hurrell's 1/4 scale Fokker Dr1 Triplane once a few other projects have been completed. https://www.sarikhobbies.com/product/fokker-dr-1-triplane-plan/  In the article which accompanied the publication of the plan, Mr Hurrell wrote that he'd used Dulux emulsion paint for the blue undersurfaces of the wings and fuselage. He powered the model with a Laser 120 and described the emulsion paint as "surprisingly fuel proof."

 

Just sayin'.

[leccyflyer]

3 hours ago, David Davis 2 said:

Mr Fro, this thread is about British manufacturers producing kits at a price which will be attractive to the builder and profitable to the producer. It has morphed into a thread about producing kits of WW2 fighters, eg: Spitfires, Hurricanes, Bf109s, Mustangs etc. I'll come back to this point later.

 

You say that you want to get some of your late father-in-law's models into the air. This is very commendable and I have no wish to dampen your enthusiasm... Do you sense a "but" coming? Well here it is....but, learning to fly a model aircraft is not as easy as it looks. I am a pretty indifferent pilot but if I have one skill above all others, it's that of training beginners how to fly  and after twenty-five years of doing just that I have come to the conclusion that beginners are best off joining a club and learning to fly a high wing monoplane trainer on a "buddy box," which is a system of linking the instructor's transmitter to the trainee's.

 

We don't know which models your late father-in-law built. If they were traditional balsa and ply models like the Keil Kraft Super 60 or the Telemaster, they may well be suitable as a trainer but you will have an emotional attachment to them so perhaps an ARTF (Almost Ready To Fly) trainer may be more suitable. Every beginner I've ever known has crashed while learning including me and if your father-in-law's models were scale models of WW2 fighters, then as a rank beginner, you will not be able to fly them and you will crash. Ask yourself this, "Did they real WW2 fighter pilots learn to fly on fighter aircraft?" No they didn't. Neither will you. They started on something more sedate then went on to an intermediate trainer before going on to an Operational Training School to fly the Spitfires, Hurricanes etc.

 

Even if your father-in-law's models are scale high wing monoplanes like a Cessna or Piper Cub, again I would still not recommend one as a trainer. They are far less robust than a purpose built trainer.

 

Finally, we regularly get inquiries from people who are determined to fly on their own. They build or assemble a model, attempt to fly and crash. They repair the model and try again... and crash. They add a gyro. "What could possibly go wrong?" Even with a device designed to make models more stable, they crash. After a few more repetitions we never hear from them again. Now there are one or two subscribers to these pages who have learned to fly successfully by themselves but they are mostly Old Greybeards like me who started out on free flight and control line models and thus learned something about aerodynamics. They then made a simple powered glider, usually without engine control and guided that around the sky before moving on to more demanding models.

 

There, Mr Fro. I have given you the benefit of my experience.  I have not used capital letters, emoticons or underling to emphasise my points but have sought to express my views in a moderate and restrained manner, unlike your initial post, if you don't mind me saying so. You are free to ignore that experience of course. Most club's are only too keen to accept new members because long established members are dying off! They probably discouraged you from using your father-in-law's models because they were unsuitable for a beginner and if you try to learn to fly using an using an unsuitable model, you'll crash. I can safely put the house on it.

 

Some pictures of the models in question would be helpful.

 

 

Preferably not in this thread - perhaps start a new thread for the topic, as it's not really anything to do with this thread.

[MattyB]

18 hours ago, Mr Fro said:

I'm somewhat of an outsider being as I inherited a number of planes from my late father-in-law. They're essentially new as in not flown and "in time" I'll get them all put together to sell. However, I'm an engineer and like tiddling about with stuff like that so it shouldn't be an issue building them. Also however, like his cars and boats that I built and sold, I'd like to give them a test before handing them on. This last bit is a problem as (from the perspective of someone who hasn't flown a model before) it's silly difficult to do so.

 

Every club a I've contacted gives me the "You don't know what you're doing, you'll crash, even by building them you'll kill a million babies" speach which is a bit off-putting. I even got a lecture from the bloke in the model shop who told me a I was definitely going to chop my arm off with a prop (I only went in to buy some fuel).

 

This apparent barrier to entry I think puts off a great deal of people. Therefore the liklihood of someone casually buying a plane to give it a go is likely to be low. 

 

Having just found your original thread with pics of your father-in-laws models, I can why you have received this advice based on the models you have. The Cub is the only one you could potentially train on, but even then because of their sometimes "interesting" handling it wouldn't be my choice for a newbie. It doesn't explain why the shop owner and clubs couldn't have given you guidance on a more suitable model and approach initially, though. 😞

 

PS - Maybe any further discussion of this topic is better on that thread? Here it is...

 

Edited August 17, 2023 by MattyB

[Zflyer]

Just a quick response to Mr Fro,

I you want to see your models flying take them along to a club and ask if one of the resident pilots will fly them for you and give you an indication as to their airworthiness or not. I believe that was your original enquiry. If you want to fly them and someone is prepared to help you fine. They are after all your models.

[Ron Gray]

And I would be only to happy to do that for you!

[RICHARD WILLS]

I think Ive dropped a stitch . 

What I mean ls , lost my book mark . 

I think i'll just breathe into a paper bag for a bit . 

Anyone got a sherbert lemon ?

[Graham R]

25 minutes ago, RICHARD WILLS said:

I think Ive dropped a stitch . 

What I mean ls , lost my book mark . 

I think i'll just breathe into a paper bag for a bit . 

Anyone got a sherbert lemon ?

Richard, I can help you out there. I highly recommend the sherbet lemons made by the Tintagel Artisan confectioners of Tintagel. They are superb. (No ifs or buts). They also do a wonderful mail order service. https://tintagelconfections.co.uk/  Mods - I’m not advertising but Richard deserves a decent sherbert or two. 

Edited August 17, 2023 by Graham R

[RICHARD WILLS]

Ok , I remember what I was saying now . The other thing that we should throw in the mix here is the fickle nature of the subject and motivation . 

To some degree , we are all on this forum , because we all have very similar interests . That is something that we dont generally find in our own clubs . 

Consequently the forum (in this case for Warbird Fanciers ) provide a valuable conduit to allow us to feel part of a community . 

I have pretty much chatted to all of you at some time or other , so I know how similar we all are . 

So , what can we learn from the fact that Rons Hanky Planky and Martin's depron 109 attracted interest , but not loads of takers ? (Shoot me if wrong Ron ) 

When , the rather more traditional , much more complicated and all wood Slope Soaring F86 Sabre seemed to generate quite a few builders . 

Were , the first two victims of foam phobia ? A little too basic ? The wrong subjects ? There has to be some clues there .

[leccyflyer]

I think Ron's Hanky Planky project had plenty of takers.

 

As you know, because I've said this before, I was blissfully unaware of the existence of Warbird Replicas and was delighted to find out what had been available when I didn't know. 🙂

Edited August 17, 2023 by leccyflyer
Richard's post

[PatMc]

22 hours ago, Paul De Tourtoulon said:

Some places are funny, it took me a year to be accepted at Brightlingsea, even though I am from Sowfend, but immediately in the Sunderland / Newcastle area,,,

So you didn't meet Chippy (Sunderland MS owner) then ?  🤣

[Paul De Tourtoulon]

14 minutes ago, PatMc said:

So you didn't meet Chippy (Sunderland MS owner) then ?  🤣

Yes I did, he sold me the worse radio that I ever had, a Mcgregor 4 channel radio, a great HP .40 rear engine and a half plastic DH chipmunk, that it all went into,

I remember the shop next door who put an Elephant's foot outside to show that he was open until it was stolen.

 

 And flying off of Newcastle Town moor,,,

Edited August 17, 2023 by Paul De Tourtoulon

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Shop was stolen ? Is the Elephant foot still there ?

 

[Ron Gray]

1 hour ago, RICHARD WILLS said:

Shoot me if wrong Ron

Bang! - blast, missed or was I firing blanks (it happens so the wife tells me).

 

 The Hanky Planky Foamie Woamie project did meet with ‘success’ within my club, out of 60 members 20 bought my ‘kits’ but I think I could have persuaded more had they bothered to turn up to club meetings! I also advertised them for sale on the BMFC Classifieds but that was a bit of a flop with only a handful sold but I put that down to marketing or complete lack of it. The whole point of the HP was to have a cheap model that could be built in a couple of hours and then to fly it in my Wacky Races without worrying if it got damaged (in fact points will be awarded at the end of the season for the most damaged / repaired one still flying). In that respect it has been very successful with everyone having a good laugh. I was planning on launching a country wide Wacky Races next year but with a different model.

 

As an aside, the HPFW has turned out to be a model that can be flown in any conditions, I’ve flown mine when the wind was blowing in excess of 25 mph but it’s downside is that it does need careful trimming which has foxed a few pilots! 
 

Would I have sold the number I did if it weren’t for the Wacky Races, the simple answer is no!