Member postings for Braddock, VC

The next time out wasn't so successful, came down in the long grass and swiped the u/c off, replaced the alloy plate one with a pair of torsion bar 6SWG bent wire ones, long grass broke the wheel this time so I did an on field repair, there was a nose leg in the club shed so I fettled the wheel off that to fit, looked a bit odd, a 2.5" wheel one side with a 3.75" wheel on tother, didn't fly it again though wind was up to gale force but I taxi-ed it and did a spruce goose hop, didn't really mean to it's just the wind was that strong it just took off , pulled the throttle back and she sank down onto the turf.

I've got to mention the os 61 fx, what an engine it's so reliable, prime it and one back flip and it's running. I can't believe I've let it languish for the best part of 10 years whilst I fiddled with Irvines and petrol engines.

With the duest of respect I think the problem is/was you're stuck in the last century; change over to 2 cell LiFe batteries and a balance charger all faults will show when you charge.

I think I dumped all my nimh and nicads over 10 years ago and never looked back.

Rx and ignition batteries are all LiFe 2 cells direct into the rx, never any problems with them except with old JR servos which let the smoke out immediately when over 5 volts is applied.

All bar 1 of my Tx have LiFe also. The odd one, a futaba 6 ex 2.4, has a 3 cell lipo in it as it's built to handle 8 dry cells.

I've never had any battery problems since my change over, SHMG.

Good LiFe batteries are both lighter and cheaper than the best of canned cells (like for like), which,for a 5 cell Ni** battery, have 4 welded terminals and two soldered ones that may fail plus they can leak and that causes all sorts of problems.

You don't use castor as well do you?

CF tubes arrived today, so out into the fresh air and cut out the old stubs of balsa from the front half of the wreck and cut the tailplane/rudder lump off the remains of the back.

Fortunately the front end has plenty of support for the longerons as you will be able to see from the attached pix.

Finish for today, will glue the cf longerons in tomorrow after cutting them to length.

Due, in part, to a deadstick from the hitherto trusty ngh 25 plane landed out in the very rough grass and thistles that border our strip.

During the landing the u/c dug in and was torn out but this sudden stop caused the model to cartwheel and the resultant whiplash caused all the longerons to fracture.

I've agonised for ages on the best form of repair and have bought 5 x 1 metre lengths of carbon fibre 6mm square tube to replace the broken longerons, I'm also going to fit torsion bar wire u/c in the wing centre section, but lack the facilities to bend the wire needed so I've drawn up a pattern and am taking it to a local engineering company to do the bizzo.

The pix around here show the fuse end of the damage, I'll completely replace the wooden structure aka oil rig with a carbon fibre one, cutting out the stubs from the front end to bond the carbon tubes in.

What is the system that the CAA have devised? The latest from the bmfa (in this month's smae news) is do not "rush into registering or taking the the test etc etc"

I have my own views on what I intend to do or not do and just don't want to be dropped into the smelly brown stuff by the bmfa.

Incidentally I'm amazed at how easily contributors can manage to turn a fairly straightforward topic into bovine exhaust.

I suppose I'll have to find out from the horses mouth how easy it is to redact one's details.

In the event of the current CAA proposals becoming adopted as a Statute, how secure is our personal information with the bmfa?

I mean if the police ask for a list of bmfa members in an area what is the likelihood of the bmfa rolling over and giving them the info?

I've had two of the original 40 fs and one 40 surpass and they ran and idled great when inverted. In fact the former two ran like that without exhaust pressurisation

Edited By Braddock, VC on 06/09/2019 17:48:25

Cut a piece of silicon fuel tube to fit over the spray bar thread, with the main needle out of course. It should be long enough that the needle valve compresses it from about 2 turns in, iirc OS used to put a piece of fuel tube in the box for new engines just for this purpose.

Also check that the main jet is clean and that the idle mixture hole goes right through into the carb air inlet.

Took 35 gms off the front, wound the tickover back 4 clicks and it's a bobbies job, lovely slow landings, best afternoon's flying in a long time, the weather helped as well.

I'm into my second one of these, first one bit the dust because I had a Frisky faast compatible Rx installed, worked fine with a futaba cg 10 tx but first flight with the new 14 sg disaster. Like many artfs it simply became desiccated upon impact.

I had to drive a long way to pick this one up, but it was worth it.

My first one had a laser 80 up front and required about 20 gms of weight at the tail to make it manageable, this one has an OS 61 Fx that I've had for years and has been barely run.

I fitted it with a 14x6 apc lookalike and it flew really well, today I tried a Graupner grey 12x7 and couldn't believe that it didn't pull as well so I landed and replaced it with the 14x6, the engine is soooo quiet even at full throttle and is so reliable I really enjoy flying it. i've done in excess of 10 flights to date and as soon as I've bought some more 15% I'll get some more stick time in.

It turns out that rolls are a bit sluggish so I'll start moving some weight off the front and the rudder feels inadequate, it doesn't spin easily and neither does it do a stall turn really well. I hope the C of G adjustment rearwards will improve this.

My view a great model, if you can get one it's really good if a little flimsy round the edges.

25FP were schneurle ported but no great shakes, even on 15 or 20 % nitro, best easily obtainable 21 by a country mile is/was the irvine 20. There are more powerful ones but asp isn't one of them and cost could become an issue. The silencers of most 21s leave a lot to be desired.

Back to the OP the asp is a better bet than the 25 FP unless you already have an FP as they are good reliable engines with an OS no 8 plug and probably suited to your model if the design recommends it.

FWIW OS claimed a much higher output than was good for them for the FP series, in real terms the asp is about 15% more powerful and 15% more noisy, especially if the the os was fitted with the super silencer.

I have the 25FP, the OS 25 FSR and the Irvine 20, the fsr leaves them all for dead but they are a bit like rocking horse poo at present.

Yes, I noticed the variations with the CG, also the plane is built from a laser cut kit. the really annoying part has been the wood selection eg the top cabin rails are made from 3/8 triangle section that is soft as butter, some of the formers are soft 1/8 sheet and the beech engine bearers, which tend to stiffen up the structure, have been omitted.

It'll probably fly fine when I get it sorted but today I took off in flat calm and two mins into the flight half a gale blew through, high pucker factor.

Grandkids are a law unto themselves, mine is 7 going on 45 he's very technology biased and gets quite cross when I drag him outdoors, but he loves playing poosticks on the bridges over the streams in our village, as do I; it's all I have the energy for !

Good point, Pat. I think I'll try some more lead in the nose as that's the easiest option even though my head tells me the c of g isn't miles out as it has a lifting tail section and my other oldies with similar arrangements fly with a c of g in excess of 50% chord from the leading edge.

I'll let you know how I get on, but it won't be for a while as the grandson is coming down for the week and all the old men up the flying site give him the heebie-jeebies.......

Well it flew, still seems either over elevated or the c of g is too far bck. I'll try 3mm of light ply under the wing trailing edge at first to see if that sorts it.

Thanks for that, I have a scratch built model that needs torsion wires like that, regrettably it needs 5mm otherwise I would have ordered up spares from seagull, just my luck, eh?

Pics of the lead gorilla glued in place, tried shifting it, it's well and truly fixed.

Also access hatch for the servos, 1/8" bass gussets and held on with servo screws.

Just have to iron down the film and make the windscreen now , also some form of battery retention, stick on velcro hasn't taken to the battery.

I wonder if one of you kind gents could advise the diameter of the torsion wire for the undercarriage please.

Here's the glue setting, everything is wrapped in polythene sheet and the bands are holding the battery hatch on.

I'll have to make a pattern for the windscreen which was made out of thin mylar and disappeared on the first flight I had with it.

To continue, I fitted the wing and with the balance point set at 42% needed just 330 gms (the new servos are mounted at the C of G site)

Because of the flimsy front end I encapsulated the lead in gorilla glue as ther's nothing really strong enough to bolt the stuff to.

That's where I'm at at the moment waiting for the GG to set.

A few years ago I bought a second hand buzard bombshell, mainly bought it to try out electric flight.

As soon as I got home I knew I'd made a mistake as the esc didn't work and the centre of gravity was literally miles out, so much so that I had to fit 700 gms of Pb up front.

It flew but it was still tail heavy so I lobbed it in the back of my workshop with a view to putting a nice little 2 stroke in it.

Fast forward to last week when I pulled it out to start work.

It's really too flimsy to pop an engine in so I started looking over how I could make it work for me.

There's a pic nearby showing a glued in hatch that covered up where the servos were, two massive metal geared chinese servos that weighed just over 100 gms.

I cut a new hatch in and made and fitted a ply mount with two corona HV digitals. Pulled the snakes out of their tube and substituted a 14 swg wire rod for the rudder and a 2mm round carbon rod as the elevator pushrod in the original tubes. The wire rod had adaptors soldered on and the CF rod had them glued on.