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I live in Australia but am considering returning to the UK. We have been through all this nonsense here. I was the guy who was mapping the registration exempt model flying fields for the Australian Miniature Aerosports Society. Commercial drone registration happened. And then recreational drone registration was cancelled. No reason given. We aren't getting it. Reading between the lines of discussions with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, they realised it would be a huge workload for zero return and would be unpoliceable with much unregistered use expected. Also all commercial drone licenses were for piloted flights for surveying, photography etc. All the autonomous drone delivery trials which were operating in some towns for years, have been scrapped. There were loads of noise complaints. Privacy complaints. Drones and payloads going missing. Drones found smashed up and stripped for parts. It turned out drone delivery is a way to deliver something tiny with zero security. So it has to be tiny in weight and value. The dream has died. Also rather pleasingly CASA now understand there is a difference between drones and model aircraft and have become very easy to work with. I hope things go so well for my British friends.

It's taken quite a while but finally I was able to maiden my Sea Hawk at last weekend's PSSA meet at the Great Orme. The launch went well (thanks to Harry Twist) and she was soon climbing away, in fact I had to feed in a considerable amount of down trim in order to maintain level flight but much of that may have been attributable to the strong winds we had over the course of the weekend. I did find it to be quite sensitive in both pitch and roll for my liking but managed to limit that with my rate switches. I didn't get to attempt a proper landing because I had a moment of complete disorientation and ended up making an enforced belly flop landing into some gorse. Amazingly no damage was incurred other than a broken pitot tube! I was VERY lucky! Since returning home I revisited my CG calcs and found an error meaning my CG was further back than I thought at around 7% static margin so I have now added another 50g in the nose to bring it forward by 10mm and giving a 10% margin. Hopefully that will make it a little less twitchy in pitch for next time. I have also upped the expo on the ailerons and elevator too for good measure. Hopefully we'll have favourable conditions for our return to the Orme next month and I'll get to fly her again Here's a couple of photos for the record: Launch photo courtesy of Phil Cooke:- In-flight photo courtesy of Dave Gilder

Byron and I had a great day on Saturday when we attended a float fly event. The Catalina had its first outing since being painted and flies very well but has poor water handling. Lucky it has plenty of power to get it onto step. The S6 was built over 25 years ago and was never flown as the builder said the wing loading was too high for the thin wing section. He came out to see it fly and could not believe just how good it is in the air.

Too windy for the flat field yesterday but perfect for sea cliff soaring. We made some new friends too.

In a blatant attempt to tip the balance and in good 'Blue Peter' style.............. Here's one I made earlier.

As long as I am still breathing, there will be IC-powered models flying in our skies.

I'm building a detailed model of mount Everest and my wife asked if it's to scale............No, I replied, it's just to look at!!!

Forgot to mention ....... there was one dodgy moment. Flying into the sun a bit and lost my orientation. My mentor stepped in to rescue the situation. No issues. It does show however that you can fly all the circuits and landings that you like but you are just a second away from a crisis. All good experiences though as you can only learn to cope with it if y9u get into a pickle now and again. My ability to correct myself is usually pretty good though and getting better with less reliance on my mentor. Here's to next week. Toto

Another great day. Four flights in total. Three take off's and four landings. My mentor did the first take off to demonstrate the intended circuit as this was a new site for me. I took over from there. So .... apart from taking off, some circuits, some procedural turns, I had a couple of attempts at aborted landings which went OK. Had to be told that my initial approach speed was a little too slow though. The landings were mostly good ( on grass ) with the last one of the day being the best. Quite happy. Next session, more of the same but with more procedure turns, some figure eights and some circles. Coming on great now ...... I smell the possibility of Solo approaching ..... Toto

Finally got the maiden flight done on my Flair 1/4 scale DR1, i have been waiting for the wind and rain to ease and the grass at the strip i do my maiden flights on to have dried out and been cut, the track across to this strip has been unpassable due to the standing water for several months. A bit of a hurried session as the full size gliders here were getting ready for a day of thermal hunting so only the one flight but it was enough to tell me i need to add a bit more weight to the tail end to counter balance the Zenoah 26 mag engine up the front. Full up elevator trim was needed which didn`t quite give hands off level flight, 36g more lead has now gone on the tail end, i think more will be needed but i will try it like this first to see how much up the up trim i can remove. Thoroughly enjoyed the flight once i had sorted the trim out (needed a bit of right aileron as well) and to cap off a good first flight i managed a greaser of a landing, not always easy on these Trip up Tripes i`ve been told, left with a smile on my face. Next job is to work on the silencer to try and get down to the noise limit at my other club, i have some ideas and if they work out i will post on here to help others overcome the problem.

I was so pleased to hear that the marvelous artist, Roy Cross, so famous for his work with Airfix turns 100 today. Such an influential man, and in many ways the driving force behind the excitement of buying a favourite Airfix model - our imagination bought to life before our eyes with his stirring box pictures. I often leaf through a couple of books I have of his Airfix artwork, and am immediately transported back to the mid sixties as a youngster taking in all the detail of a B17 being harried by the Luftwaffe and dropping its bombs amid bursting flak - or a Spitfire streaking away from a vanquished 109 smoke pouring from its engine. Great days, great art......Happy birthday Roy and thanks.

First UK F3A competition of the season last Sunday at Hurley in Warwickshire, a great day's flying had by all, mostly in sunshine although not very warm.

Hi folks, still ticking along.... I decided to do the wing fillet using thin ply and curved balsa as I had used the method on other aircraft. First made a template and cut some very thin ply to shape. I glued it on with Gorilla brown glue as it expands and fills gaps nicely. The clingfilm on the wing stops it sticking. Next I used some trusty cereal packet cardboard to make a template and cut out the balsa fillets. Bit of a soak in hot water and some super glue and jobs a good'n' 🙂 Next onto the covering stage. I used Sainsburys brown paper (£1.50 a roll) and Evostick exterior glue for no other reason than I had it on the shelf. This I diluted with about 5% water. What can I say..... it works absolutely beautifully!!!!! Thank you Richard for the technique. It was a stress and wrinkle free process. I painted it on the back of the paper then applied almost immediately, smoothing down with a dry cloth. quick wipe with a damp clothe to remove any glue that gets on the surface then a going over with a hot iron (150) with a sock on. Amazing how it can go round curves, brilliant. when all was dry for a few days I sealed the surface with some Ronseal interior acrylic varnish, once again watered down 5% and applied with a sponge so as not to use excessive amounts. Lovely surface and only used one roll of paper, will definitely use again! I also added a bit of detail to the tail feathers just for interest. . On to the cockpit detail bits. I know that all of this is invisible when you are flying past at 200ft but it is one of the things that I always get huge enjoyment from. It is made from a combination of my 3d printed bits, Weetabix box cardboard and scraps of foam and balsa. All the cockpit parts weighed in at just under 15g which is good. Mr Pilot was a bit short in the body so I gave him a booster bit of foam to raise him up. The gun sight is a bit of food packaging and card. Pleased with how it turned out, he looks happy in his office! In the back ground is my other ongoing project, a Flair Legionnaire being built as a Nieuport 11. Next on the list is to get the vac formed parts glued on and the canopy - then its paint time! Hope you are enjoying your builds as much as I am Cheers for now, Simon

This is my take on fitting the radiator on the underside of the wing. first I added some extra width to the base that gets glued to the wing. Instead of sanding a V shape on the underside to fit the dihedral, I cut it in half and sanded the top flat. Then I added some extra width to the radiator and sanded to shape. Here I really struggled to get the angles right to blend with the vac formed front scope - it just didn't look right. So I tried gluing on some scrap balsa and sanding to shape. I think I will go with this option. More later...

Another day at the field with the Warbirds FW190 and Hurricane + the BT Corsair 9.30 am till 4.30. Not as warm as yesterday but good flying weather. A good turn out again quite a lot if banter, 16 batteries to charge, took more but it started spitting on to rain which stopped when we reached the car park.

Realised at the field this afternoon it was the first time I’d taken more balsa models than foam. Had a few great flights and finally got comfortable flying the TN Hunter (after switching today to a much lighter battery). As ever the Warbird Replicas Focke was flown the most, but all three were great despite the wind!

Down in London, went to Gordon Ramsey's for lunch, picked the cheapest item on the menu....Boneless chicken...£48.00!...waiter brought it to the table....a fried egg!! ken anderson...ne....1...... egg dept.

I eventually removed the bubbled covering on one wing and replaced it. What seems to work is using Balsaloc on the wing skin veneer prior to applying the PVA coated, brown paper. I am also convinced that the Gorilla PVA is not the best for this job and next time I will buy some cheaper PVA from the builders merchants. I have got to the painting stage now and will final fit the flying control surfaces prior to the finishing paint coat. I have used Halfords white primer on the lower surfaces and grey primer on the upper surfaces.

Busy couple of days - outer wing panels sorted and attached, its surprising just how big this is! 🤣

That's why I made mine from depron and foamboard same size less than half the weight. At present uses 2 3s 3000. It would be better about 60" with a single battery. I tend to fly the 110 more as it is one piece, twice as many flights with the same batteries and I can hand launch it myself. Now I have the dolly I will see how the Mosquito goes from that.

And in my 6th week of rehabwhtomorrow I’mmoving to another rehab centre t to continue my progress. In the last week I have stood unaided from my several timeschaand taken a few steps outside of the parallel bars with a stick for support! This is where I am off to, in sunny St Neots…

Here's another one! Clubmate Steve had never built a model before so this is his first attempt, personally I think that he did fine job. He asked me to maiden it and after adding some nose weight (he was using a 2200 mAh 4s battery) it was ready to go.

I love this question, because here's my answer with regards to the Radiomaster: (Ive got a TX16S which i upgraded from OTX to ETX) OpenTX is red, EdgeTX is blue. Oh, and EdgeTX makes the touchscreen work, which i find almost pointless, the small size vs my fat digits standing in a paddock? More accurate to use the buttons/scroll wheel. So the touchscreen functionality adds no tangible benefit to me. The menu structures, options, control of plane functionality they each give you are are all but identical. My hobby is building toy planes out of balsa, and flying them in a field. The two different (nearly identical) OS's do nothing either way for that. Guys who like programming computers; or must have the latest of whatever the latest thing is, will wax lyrical about firmware updates, LUA scripts and stuff like that. None of this helps me build and fly my models, so i don't go for it. Stand by for other opionions.

I suppose I can finish this thread off now with a successful conclusion. After finishing the model in primer, it was successfully test flown in October 2022. I then left it alone until this spring when I painted it and it was flown again at the first PSSA event of the year at the Great Orme.

Another useful tool here . The sanding drum . Makes lightwork of the edges and tidies up nicely . Just fits in a standard drill chuck . That is pretty much it . Apologies for mine looking rough , but I'm sure you appreciate I dont really have time for hanging about . I reckon you could do the whole lot in an hour if pushed . But to be fair .......Ive done a few . Any questions?

Sorry Brian I didn't turn up for your funeral as I miss understood when your wife said you had died on your feet at the last comedy show.

Ah, the BF110, a superb model, here is the maiden flight of mine a couple of years ago Plus a couple more flights