John Bisset

I made some floats for my Wot 4 a few years back, hotwire cut from foam and covered with Solartex. I modified them after the first few flights to extend the float noses, because there was so much spray thrown up. Float noses slightly longer than - ahead of aircraft nose worked well for me and avoided spray and reduced dig in potential.

My son used a Precedent FlyBoy as his first trainer. Worked well and he easily transitioned onto the Wot 4, which we ran for a while with limited throws. The Wot4 makes a good docile trainer, with the potential to become more manoeuvrable and lightly aerobatic later. Good slow flying characteristics. Used that to train several people, all pilots of full size aeroplanes as well.

Thanks Martin - I do recall the pressure form DfT but had not noticed any comment about making labelling removable. Sloppy of me & unfair to blame the CAA for that. Luckily a little IPA (the chemical not the beer!) has taken the markings off my models without damage. John B

So, if I understand the past few posts correctly, we are now expected to change last year's absurdly long numbers for another set of absurdly long numbers that don't meet the EASA standard (which would at least give some purpose to al this!) and may be simply randomly generated nonsense numbers. Hmm. I agree the effort is trivial Martin, but so is this requirement. If it meets no international standard, why bother? It just annoys me to be expected tor remove the darn number I painted and wrote on all my models last year, for some arbitrary tomfoolery by a bored civil servant ! I think I should ask again- has anyone actually been asked for a number yet? Is any of this worth doing? It seems to me that if 'the authorities' were to successfully write down my existing, now out of date, number they could figure fairly quickly whose model they are looking at - or do they throw away all 'old' records? So it does its job for now anyway. Maybe I should wait till after a suitable furore has been made and the numbers are 'adjusted' to allow British modellers to use their machines overseas, then write on the final useful number... Eheu. Truly they do manage to be the Campaign Against...

The snag is that 'final' doesn't appear to mean to them what it does to you and me. After more than 50 years of involvement in flying, full size & model in this country (and elsewhere), I am certain that there is little which is actually 'final'. I thought the number we were each given last year was the EASA related one, while this effort is to show the CAA now 'going it alone', no doubt to demonstrate that we in the UK can do our own thing (sigh!). If nit - why did we not wait a year - has anyone had their number checked? Why we need what sounds to be an impressively large subset of Avagadro's number for such a simple thing beats me - what was wrong with using our BMFA membership numbers anyway? - perfectly traceable ! (And of course our numbers from last year are also traceable!) And as someone else said - what chance anyone noting that long string number will get it right? How to make a difficult hash of something simple and in fact un-necessary. These are the people who tell us to understand the rules, criticise or prosecute us if we fail, make the darn rules hard to find or understand - try looking up Notams 'officially' - and then they tell us as pilots that keeping things simple and clear is good for safety. Ye gods! (My apologies folks - a full size flying mini-rant as well as a n r/c modelling one ! ) My thought wrt the CAA match those of 'Zflier', sadly. The best of them are superb, but all too often today they fall into bureaucracy mode. Sigh. Onwards & upwards - soon!

I must be doing something wrong. Every time I try to log in, the system fails to recognise my password. I have reset this three times now -and remembered to save as I thought (at the bottom of the pw change page). Still the same, on a return, not recognised. Anyone else having this problem? John B

David, I have done as you described and gone to look at 'Marketplace'. I see 'sale items from 2017 listed. Shown as emails - surely these are not still active? Seems improbable., Have these simply nit been weeded out? Previously, it was possible to see at a glance what sort of items were offed for sale by forum members in different categories. Is that still possible? Regards, John Bisset

The last two postings make the point. Vaccination reduces the probability of infection and should - by encouraging the body to develop early response, reduce severity of any infection in most cases. Care is still going to be sensible, especially for the really vulnerable and we are still learning about vulnerabilities across the broad spectrum of people. A second vaccination improves the odds and, it is thought, should aid longevity of protection - that is less certain - we haven't been vaccinating enough folk for long enough to have a good handle on that yet. What the optimum revaccination cycle will be is also unknown yet. Things are improving; Rome wasn't built in a day ! Politicians and media folk want/would like simple instant answers and simple instant solutions. Science, engineering and the real world don't work that way I'm afraid.

Hi Murat, thanks. The Petrel and the Gull were quite similar in appearance and given that Sling developed the Petrel after building some Gulls including one that had a cantilever wing, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a design link, although the Petrel was supposedly derived from the Rhonadler. Interesting machines. I see Graham Saw owns the only remaining airworthy Petrel. I wonder if the Gull in the National Museum in Edinburgh is the one in that photo - there won't have been many up in Scotland. John B

That is it - thank you both. I had a feeling this site would come up trumps! John B

Maybe we are being overly pessimistic. Looking at what, for example, Balsa Cabin and SLEC are saying, there should be supplies of balsa in future. These will be more expensive, so looking for alternative woods & materials is sensible of course. I suspect some of the rapid emptying of supplies at SLEC has been aided by to members on here doing a wee bit of - dare I say it - panic buying. (or 'stocking up, just in case'. Remember the toilet riol follies! Started to do the same, then realised I haven't got a clear idea of what I need. So, I will wait. The sad thing is that I bet quite a bit of that now stored balsa will not be used. Eventually some will return via local club sales etc. Cheers, John B

Can anyone identify this old glider? Photo taken at Dyce probably late 50s early 60s. I thought it to be a Slingsby Petrel or a Minimoa, but then saw the wing struts. A friend wandering down memory lane sent it and asked if I knew it. Cheers, John B

"After 1st Jan we are adopting the EASA format.." Thanks Andy. With all the rest of the nonsense(s) going on I'd forgotten about EASA ! John B

That Panda video is super. I wonder if it was deliberately set up for fun; that zookeeper obviously knows and likes those pandas. A very happy bit of playing going on!