Dad_flyer

I'm with @Geoff S. Touch screens are great at imprecise things, like pinch to zoom. It you want to select the right place you need something physical. XY jog pad is best, but a scroll wheel is ok on menus. Buttons can be operated by feel, and work when your fingers are wet. And yes, I would like my phone to have physical buttons too.

I find the middle of the colourful Wera hex keys too fat for many jobs. Wera also do a plain set which is the conventional hex thickness all the way up. Not as fun or as nice to handle, but more use. At work I use Bahco handled ball drivers BE-8700 series. People kept taking themp, so when I had some space at the end of a budget I got a set each for the other teams around me, and put labels on for each room. After that I have usually been able to lay my hands on one when needed. The 2.5 mm are well used and with some of the more ham-fisted colleagues the balls do break off, even on a Bahco. There is not a 1.5mm or a 1/16" in the range so Wera and Wiha for those.

Has anyone used Scale Model Shop? They happen to have all the things I need in stock, otherwise it would be two orders to Everything Airbrush and airbrushes.com...

Had another good look. No way to get in to the pins, there is basically no gap. I shall not try cutting them out until I have got new ones, otherwise it is all left hanging on the joiner going through the rudder hinge line.

Possibly. The surfaces are really nicely fitted with almost no gap. If I can get the pins out, do I use the hinges again? Probably not, but it feels wrong to take a hacksaw to them. ?

Thank you @Alan Hinton. Slight snag on the other end of the model now. I was having a play with the beautifully free-moving elevators. There are four Robart-type hinges. One of the inner ones is broken. I had not noticed before because there are two horns and a joiner, plus it is a thick and stiff structure, so it keeps closely aligned. How on earth do I replace it? I suppose I have to get all the hinges out and start with new ones, but how do you remove them.

What prop are you using? And do you know what current it is pulling?

My overweight version flew first on a 2830-1000kv with a 9x5 floppy plastic prop (I think, it may have been 10x6). It was ok, but needed to be flat out a lot of the time. Flew much better on 2830-1300kv with 9x5 prop (~230W). That was nice. 3s2200 battery, as in the plans.

It is also very thin, so the overlap edge is very unobtrusive.

If you don't want a particular shape, then all you need is to find a bottle nearly the right size and heat a little to bend/shrink/coax the edge to fit to the fuselage. No plug, but you have not got much choice of shape. But I think my levels of "acceptable" are rather lower than yours! This looks like a beautiful model.

Thank you everyone for so much useful advice. My intention for flying style is smooth (as far as I can!) more than speed or 3D. I'll go with the Hitec which is 5-6kg depending on voltage and the consensus is that should be plenty. Brand name peace of mind for a model this size, whether or not that really makes a difference on reliability. @Ron Gray I was looking at that Hobbywing ESC at one point, I think I only steered away from it because people stocking it don't sort their motors in a way that makes it easy to find the size you want, or only have very expensive motors. Do you use a programming card for it?

Maybe Hitec HS-485HB, about twice the torque of a 148 or 3001. Futaba and Hitec etc plastic seems pretty resilient. Or metal gear and dual ball raced 4-Max, 4M-556AMG-087

It has been a very long while. A bit of thinking, a bit of saving up and a lot of winter. I wanted to get a better radio and this was as good a reason as any. Radiomaster Tx16s is on order. Next step is to refit the servos. The assembled wisdom of the forum did not have an opinion on the double elevator servo back in September. Any advice now? I am thinking s148 on rudder as before, and just the s148 on elevator?

Light will be better, just heavier is not toooo bad ?. There is plenty of strength in the wing, so thinner foam sounds like a plan.

Reading that back, I don't quite see how I added 350g with the motor etc, but that is what it says. Edit: found the bag of removed entrails, everything except the servos: 340g 490+340+servos=870. Wow.

Popped out to the shed. Empty weight of fuselage with wing, no servos motor or even swappable motor tray thing. It does include the nose weight I needed at first, I think 30g-ish: 490g My book says my all up weight was 850g without battery. 1007g flying! Waaaay over the ultralight design, but still not actually heavy for a 41" span Spit. It did not have unlimited vertical though!

That does not sound bad. I need to check my book for the weight of mine before I took it apart (too many flights, too much confidence, too many 'arrivals'). I think it was 800-900g so plenty of room for your power train. The weight issue just starts going the wrong way when you get the tail too heavy - which I did with thick paint. That then means quite a bit of nose weight to counter it. Edit: Just looked up the instructions weight, which is ~420g without battery (using the lighter Flitetest board). From your weight, you only need to add 2 more servos, receiver, ESC, motor. The motor will be ~50g, the rest adds up to not much more. So that is about right, as long as you can keep the required nose weight down. Even if not, it flies fine a little porky.

It is designed as an art board, so will take pretty much any type of colour. Be careful with the weight though. I used Child_flyer's acrylics on my FT simple spitfire and needed a lot more nose weight to balance it afterwards. Rattle cans work well and add much less weight.

Landing in a crosswind, and with the forward screen missing takes a lot of concentration. He will be happier after Danny has done the frowning trying to get the glazing on.

If you don't fit the forward screen his chart will blow off the seat! Without that you never know where he might end up.

This must depend on the end-to-end situation. A heat pump moves more heat energy than the electrical energy it consumes. It may not be as good as theoretically possible, but it is still more than the input. A gas boiler will give you very nearly all of the chemical energy stored as heat. A simple electric heater is basically 100% efficient at point of use. The question is what do you assume about the source of the electricity and gas? If the electricity comes from gas fired power stations, then whichever system you use you are burning gas. There is a delicate calculation to be done of the generation and distribution losses with any heat pump gain. It may well come out negative. If the electricity is from renewable sources it is still not 'free', but there is no direct link to gas or other fossil fuels and it is much easier to get overall benefit from a heat pump system. Of course we are nowhere near 100% renewable on electricity, but all solutions require that as a starting point. We are moving much faster than I ever expected towards that.

Yes, make a smaller x-mount if you need to, there is quite a bit of space before you hit the motor. In the extreme, bolt the motor from behind directly to a bulkhead. That would need access from the rear but might be possible.

This is a current thread about one of the VMC kits. https://www.modelflying.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/49070-vintage-model-company-cub-4-channel-trainer/

Or for more cartoon scale than a funfighter, but plenty light and generally easy flying, build a Flitetest foamboard warbird. The simple Spitfire is great fun, but certainly not scale. I have not tried the master series version, which is a much better shape.

This is all really thought provoking, like all of @Simon Chaddock's threads. I think there is a real use case for this, if I am correctly remembering that there was an article about casting a prop from RCM&E a couple of years ago. If casting props works, then you need a blank. If you can 3D print a blank which is strong enough for even a short test in a fully guarded environment, then you have a quick way of checking the shape before committing to moulds. There is still not much point for a 6×3 2-blade. But to achieve your longed for scale outline, or for 3 or more blade or other unusual requirement maybe there is a safe and useful purpose. As I say, that is if it is considered safe and sensible to mould or glass or carbon your own props.