leccyflyer

They do if they are commemorating D-Day Eric. 🙂 Looking very good Richard. Nice one. 👍

They are also available in abundance at every swapmeet, along with lots of other smallish glow engines. I think if there is to be a shortage any time soon, it will be at the larger capacity, more complex end of the market, which never sold in anything like the same numbers and will become increasingly rare as runners, as the spares run out and there isn't the same pool of scrappable engines for parts.

Steve Webb tells a great story of a punter who phoned the shop as he was unable to get his engine started. Steve talked the guy through all the obvious step - fuel, air, glow etc and could hear the sound of a prop being flipped in the background. Eventually he heard the engine burst into life, followed shortly by "Oooh, ouch, ouch, ouch" then a clatter and the engine noise stopped. Steve asked the guy if he'd started the engine in his hand - which he had. It then turned out that he was in a phone box! 😮

The water is probably going a greeny colour because the terminal tabs are being dissolved by electrolytic corrosion, which makes it quite likely that they are not dead at all, but because the tabs have gone and the connections to the power and balance leads have gone, it can be almost impossible to check the state of charge.

It's also the salt in solution which permits the electrolytic corrosion of the battery terminal tabs, potentially leaving the lipo not fully discharged, but with the connections through which the individual cell voltage could be monitored essentially all but gone, which is a far from ideal situation. This method of discharging lipos has been completely discredited and should not be followed..

No charge involved - that's what the car bulb is for.....

Welcome to the forum Ray. IMO in attempting to put the servo wiring immediately behind the leading edge in a foam wing you risk compromising the glue joint surface by which the leading edge is attached. Far better to use a sharp scalpel and lift a strip of veneer to cut a wee groove in the foam to go directly to the servo bay cut out. That can then be made good and the veneer replaced over the top for a virtually seamless finish.

Here's a link to a comprehensive document explaining where the outdated and frequently misunderstood recommendation to dispose of lipos by leaving them in salt water came from, when it was withdrawn as a recommendation by the originator and why it's a bad idea. https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?3413821-Safe-Disposal-of-LiPo-Batteries

Sorry, but that's terrible advice and was recognised as terrible advice some years ago. Check out the BMFA advice mentioned earlier in this thread which explicitly states not to put lipos in salt water to discharge, it is ineffective and unecessary.

Hi Stuart - that soaking in salted water is a bad idea, since it can result in corrosion of the terminal tabs on the lipos before they are actually discharged, leaving you with no means of fully discharging them. It's long been superseded as an appropriate method for safe disposal. I'm surprised that 4-Max would recommend such a procedure.

You're doing a grand job Chris - I particularly like the tail structure. 👍

Understood - however I edited because I hadn't read your post and I'd referred to that nonsense about home brewing methanol. Something HMRC would likely take a very restrictive view on and, of course, completely unnecessary, given the legitimate sources of methanol being quite secure, at least in our lifetimes.

Glow fuel will be around for a long time, provided there is a market for it.

Bad luck Toto but, to be fair the forecast for this weekend is pretty grim anyway - it's been snowing and raining here all day and the winds and rain forecast for the weekend makes any flying unlikely.

Yes - it's possible to get an unbalanced pack from just about any brand. That's why it is vital to check individual cell voltages as soon as the pack arrives. The key thing then is what will the supplier do about it. Some suppliers will advise that you cycle the pack with a few charge /discharge cycles to see if it settles down. Frankly I'm not keen on that at all, as such cycling is just eating the lipo packs supply of lives and I expect them to arrive in good order. My favourite HRB and Zeee Power packs delivered through Amazon are good as gold and any problem is dealt with immediately with either full or partial credit, or return.

Zeee Power https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zeee-4000mAh-Battery-Airplane-Helicopter/dp/B089YNLCVG

Doesn't have to be an expensive headlight bulb Chris, any old 12v -24v bulb will do the job.

When any lipo has reached the end of it's useful life they are discharged overnight, outdoors, using a car headlight bulb to which I've soldered 4mm gold connectors on short fly leads. With the pack dead, the voltage is checked through the balance leads, before the leads are clipped close to the case, have a small wrap of tape or a cm of heatshrink over their ends. The inert lipo then goes to the battery box at the municipal recycling centre and the leads go into my scrap wire drawer for recycling of the wire and connectors.

Personally I usually use a pair of magnets and they are held in place by epoxy. It doesn't hurt to put a smear of epoxy across the surface of the magnet to lock it into the structure, however, sometimes, the pull can be too strong and they pull out. On some occasions I've made use of a steel washer in lieu of a second magnet. You can make good use of the magnets from inside a wrecked motor, if you liberate them, which have the advantage of being rectangular in plan view and so can be neatly stuck onto the corner of the hatch, with a fillet of epoxy and microballoons to hold them in place.

Got a few of those marvellous BEFA stickers on some of my models that have been around since before the Millennium Bash and, for me, it was the golden age of electric flight with all of those low key, very enjoyable fly-ins around the country. There was a relatively small band of electric flyers successfully having fun with a range of models and meeting the challenges to getting good performance from limited kit before e-flight became mainstream. Met a lot of really good modellers at that time and the free exchange of ideas plus those fly-ins made for a proper e-flight community. The wee yellow BEFA newsletter was crammed with informative and innovative articles and everyone at the fly-ins was so willing to share. Seeing what my fellow modellers were achieving with simple brushed motors and banks of home-made NiCds was an inspiration at the time. It made it a very easy decision to switch to e-flight. Happy days. 😎

Don't think they are at Aston Villa - aren't they at the Emptihad?

It sort of feels like we have been rained off and hardly flying at all this year, but on checking and comparing with last year, I find that logged my 101st flight of the year on Sunday, compared to 118 flights in the same period last year.

Your Blackhorse Stuka looks ace Chris. What set-up are you using in it?