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leccyflyer

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leccyflyer last won the day on February 27

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  1. There are a few Bearcat schemes are out there beyond the classic Midnight Blue, even including, heaven forbid, non-warbird Reno Racer style liveries 😞 , but the Bearcat's tubby ovoid fuselage barely has a straight line or plane on it, suggesting either planking or veneered foam turtle decks, fuselage sides and bottom - similar to the Thunderbolt.
  2. Venting of electrolyte can occur with heavily abused NiCds or NiMhs and I've seen that as white, grey or greenish blue efflorescence- but it will be on the positive lead, rather than the negative lead, as that is where the vents are located. The BWC was definitely more prevalent in the past, hence me starting this thread, as I hadn't seen it in years. Irrespective of the different chemistry of lipos vs NiCds/NiMhs, the different storage regimes would likely not promote the phenomenon in lipos, which really ought not be stored in the model, connected to the wiring loom and likely not in cold damp conditions. As mentioned above it's a simple enough check to make, to bring out the crimped connector from it's housing on the battery and examine it under a magnifier to look for any discolouration or indications of corrosion.
  3. FWIW I would jump at the chance of a WR Spitfire Mk1a, above anything else. I already have a Spitfire IX kit, Hurricane, P-51D but you cannot have too many Spitfires, A 55" span Bf109E is a hole in my fleet as well.
  4. As pointed out above, decent quality isoporopanol will remove those covering film adhesive marks and is relatively gentle. Good old fashioned purple methylated spirits would be my next port of call if the residue was particularly stubborn, moving on to white spirit. I'm constantly surprised at the frequent advice to use acetone, or even worse, cellulose thinners for such jobs. Personally those would be my absolute last resort solvents to let anywhere near a model which had any form of plastic covering.
  5. Indeed - but my point was that the BWC can't spread to the wiring loom inside the model if the battery isn't connected to anything else. The usual explanation is that cold damp sheds provide the perfect environment for that black wire corrosion to take place. FWIW when I mothball a model into storage all the gear is taken out, including batteries. It's only a small number of models which are in active service, where they have a receiver pack built in, that would be of any concern and that's what preflights on the bench are meant to detect.
  6. That's a valid point Andy. In this case, with no switch, the battery isn't connected, so the BWC was confined to the battery lead itself. The vast majority of my models do not use flight batteries, but the small number that do, will be getting their usual thorough checks before making any trip to the field.
  7. Yep, definitely prefer the razorback version of the Thunderbolt. In fact I prefer the razorback version of everything - P-51B >>>>>> P-51D, Spitfire 1 over any late Mk Spitfires The Thunderbolt has a lot of desireable attributes for an electric warbird - wide track undercarriage, deep fuselage to aid with getting the lipos in close to the front, big radial cowl, so plenty of room for the motor. I wasn't really into them and did question the assertion made several times in RCM&E that the Thunderbolt was the most frequent warbird on the warbird circuit but once I got my Eflite P-47D I was a convert, they fly beautifully and the ground handling is excellent.
  8. Had an interesting one this afternoon whilst making some long postponed repairs to a slope glider. I badly damaged the fuselage on my Speedo a couple of years ago, when I dropped it getting it down from it's ceiling hook. I've been repairing the fuselage this week, with epoxy and microbaloons, 0.6oz glasscloth and EzeKote resin and with the structural integrity restored, went to check out the systems. The 4 cell 300mah Nimh receiver pack was much more dead than expected, but not necessaily a problem. Close inspection before attempting to wake it up however, revealed quite severe black wire corrosion on the battery lead. I hadn't seen that in many a year, but this was bad, so I removed the heatshrink and sure enough it was all the way back to the last cell. That pack is now in the bin. That gave me a bit of a problem, with no realistic chance of getting an identical pack by the weekend, when I wanted to fly the Speedo. By chance though, I did have a couple of wee 2s1p 450mah lipos in a stubby block configuration and those actually fitted the very small available space. I found an old GWS ICS100 ESC which could be used as a voltage regulator/BEC and getting everything on the scales there was no significant weight penalty. It was a tight squeeze getting everything back in the Speedo but it all worked out in the end. Since the lipo is a bit further forward than the NiMh pack I didn't need any additional nose weight to counteract the fuselage repairs. Since moving to mostly lipos, even for some receiver packs, it's been years since I've seen black wire corrosion, plus the fact that most of my models that have receiver packs are not stored in the cold, damp conditions of our previous home may well account for that, but I recall it being a fairly common occurrence back at my old club in NW England. Definitely something to do a careful check for on any of my older airframes that might be taken out of mothballs.
  9. Have you reported the issue to RCG?
  10. Talking about IRL Ron, where R=Real, not R=Ron's 😉 Avid subscriber to Gray-O-Vision. 🙂
  11. Yep, when using the dolly most times I take off so that it runs off into the long grass. If it stays on the strip, so be it, the dolly is small and light and ought not interfere with anything. Generally there's someone who can retrieve if if that is the case, I frequently retrieve other flyer's dollies if they are in the middle of the strip. Never in a million years would I ever attempt to retrieve the dolly whilst flying the model and I've never seen it attempted.
  12. Nice work Murat - that's a bonny colour scheme and should be nice and easy to see in the air.😎👍
  13. Amazon offer the best Lipo service that I've experienced in many years. With Amazon Prime you get next day delivery, including Sundays, of the very good value Zeee Power lipos, with great quality at a competitive price. These have replaced my previous favourite HRB lipos from Amazon, which got so popular their availability of some sizes was impacted. The customer service is second to none. I check my new lipos the instant they arrive and any problem or inbalance is dealt with right away. Last order one of the packs had a badly unbalanced cell and the refund and reorder was sorted within minutes, with a replacement pair of lipos arriving next day, which meant I got three for the price of two. Highly recommended. Other retailers can be a bit more awkward if there is a problem, plus there is that mandatory courier charge and my Amazon Prime more than pays for itself every month, even without all the additional benefits.
  14. That's the point, I'm not paying that inflated price, I'm getting those excellently priced Lipos from AliExpress at the much better cost that I posted.
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