Sat 17/04/2010

Good days flying again. Still waiting for my new radio to arrive so I used my HK4 Channel radio to fly the little nieuport 17. halfway into the 2nd flight someone says...hey...will it loop. Dunno i say. lets find out. so i climb up a bit to get some height so i can do a power dive. I put it into a gentle dive and within 2 seconds...CRACK...the bottom left wing is gone, I hadnt even begun to apply elevator to start the loop. the others folded almost immediately. so down it goes. hits the tarmac and sticks straight up out of the ground. Almost comical :) haha. oh well. part of the game hey. Plane is a rightoff but all the electronics etc are ok

Mamemoiselle Build Picture

Here is a pic of the wing I covered for the Mamemoiselle.

Just For Dennis

Dennis. I know youve been looking for a while for plans for a engine which can be made from stock metals and billet

here you go. Looks nice


http://www.myhobbystore.co.uk/product/15578/rc1539--matador-60-60-twin

Cheers
DS

Wow. check this out

http://www.westonuk.co.uk/westonuk2_066.htm

Ramblings from the hangar

Ok so i covered the Mademoiselles wing last night with the burnt orange transparent covering i got from HK and wow! its amazing stuff. a little tricky to seperate the backing from it. but you know what. at 1/3 of the price of its competitors ill stick with it. it irons excelently. shrinks nicely and does not deform or discolour in the slightest unlike solarfilm. its very similar to oracover.

Perhaps this is a good time to talk about covering and the how to's of it. People often tell me they battle to cover their planes. they get warps and wrinkles and it does not stick. well. the most important thing when it comes to covering can be summed up in 1 word. PATIENCE

take your time. do it slowly and evenly and you wont have any problems
for instance. this is how to cover a wing

1.) generally you start on the underside as you dont want the overlap to be on the top.
2.) if the covering is big enough cut a panel big enough for 1 half of the wing, leave 25mm on each side of the wing to compensate for errors and overlap
2a.) To test the temp of the iron(a normal household iron without steam is fine) cut a little covering and place it on the iron face. it should wrinkle and shrivel slightly but should not melt and curl up into a ball.
3.) tack(iron) the covering done in 1 spot about 5mm big on 1 side
4.) now pull it gently to take out the wrinkles and tack it on the opposite side again in a 5mm spot.
5.) now go 90 degrees and tack it again
6.) Keep doing this moving around the wing until you have got a tack spot every 5cm or so. do NOT go in 1 direction as you will get a wrinkle at the end. Go from side to side and across like you would be tightening the wheel nuts on a car wheel or tightening head nuts on a motor.
7.) Once this done the then tack between the gaps and seal it. by doing small tacks around the wing you have eliminated wrinkles
8.) then cut the covering to size allowing for a 6mm overlap. iron it down securely all around
9.) Do the other half of the wing and then the top.
9.) Then take a hair dryer or heat gun(or paint stripper) and gently warm the entire surface, once its warm start concentrating the heat on areas until you start seeing the covering shrink and pull the covering tight. DO NOT Hold the heat gun in one spot too long as you will burn a hole in the covering in no time

For those of you who are curious. the guy with the tarring never came back to us. so no news there. will most likely put another layer of slurry on top of the runway though.

HK Covering

Well i finally received some of my covering so i can start the job of finishing off the mamosoille build. I got a roll of HK Burnt Orange Transparent Covering from Hobbyking(also available from www.wifly.co.za) and i must admit i was sceptical. R170 bucks for 5m of covering whereas locally you can pay up to 300 rand for 2m. anyway, im pleased to report its excellent. has good ironing characteristics and sticks well. does not deform easily and all in all does an excellent job. i will be buying lots more in future.

i tested it on my mamosoiller rudder, and elevator. waiting for my clear transparent covering to arrive now along with my new radio

Sat 10 April 2010

Ok so i sold my broken radio and receivers to dave armitage. Im also selling my Trex 250 with all the upgrades to finance a new radio. let me know if anyone is interested

So i went flying. took my park flyer. did not fly it due to wind. had a smashing day otherwise

Fanie brought out a profile f-22 raptor edf. launched at...WOW what a plane. unlimited verstical. jet like performance. simply awesome. its the one available on wifly for 699. i want one :)

only problem is this. the batt sits up from in front of the motor. Fanie attached it via velcro. Anyway he opened the motor to speed up and we heard THWACK. and we see battery and airplane part ways. the plane flops to the gropund slowly. so slowly you can catch it. no damage. the batt goes flying into the dirt.

pick up the batt. it went through the impeller destroying the impeller and denting the pack badly. pack still works fine though.
plane otherwise ok. Was quite a site to see it flopping to the ground like a parachute

Then i was flying Louis trainer. and it went nuts. turns out the BEC he was using(he is using a 7.4 pack for rx power) went nuts. So it went in bad bad bad. completely destroyed. crashed near the rocky road leading into the field.

what else. oh ya. Flew Lukes heli but he moved his receiver and the wires are now rubbing against the motor. needless to say it stats glitching and eventually goes out of control. still on the ground thankfully so no damage. the motor rubbed through the servo wires and was shorting out. should be fine again once the wires are cut and fixed properly

Henry crashed his big yellow ultra stick due to radio problems. Again with a hitec optic 6 on 35mghz. having alot of interference problems on it lately. Just last week shauns Giles was virtually unflyable due to inteference.

what else. nah thats about it. all good fun otherwise.