alan

That's rather nice. Can you put some brown paint on the white foam edges please?

Very nice video of a short carrier flight, Happy new year (soon0 to CAMFC, Alan

Dave, you should have noticed that I put the word drones in quotation marks to show that I wasn't being literal. But I did post before realising that it applies to just about all r/c flying in FAA airspace. This action doesn't affect us at all in the UK (for those who are worried now) but I posted because you never know when someone in the government or CAA will look at what the U.S. is doing and think that it's a good idea. But what is controlled airspace? around airports or the whole of the U.S.?

http://www.gizmag.com/drones-government ... faa/40906/ Compulsory registration for all non-commercial drones/UAVs in U.S. (EDIT) Sorry, overlapped with Bravedan!

Pete, you could sell some of the motors and convert some to electric, even the big ones. Actually I still have Pete Shaw's old barnstormer 72". It flies fine with a big electric motor. PS sent you a P.M.

[attachment=0]DSC04597.JPG[/attachment] Could any club member use an Arcoy drill and drill stand? Made in UK decades ago, the drill is not up to much though fully working; the drill stand is in excellent condition and very sturdy with very smooth travel and no sideways play. It would take any modern mains drill with a 43mm collar. Could be picked up from West Wickham or I could possibly bring it to a club night. Weighs 20kg! email (don't use p.m.) alanvcraig(AT)gmail.com

Anyone interested in dataloggers? Allendale which owns rc-log is offering 10% off all its products until midnight 25th may. Use SPRING10 discount code, don't know how the overall price compares though http://www.rc-log.co.uk Alan

That is scary and creepy.

....And here I am again. The Vapextech 6v "instant" pack mentioned in this thread has now died and will not accept a charge. OOPS my mistake - charging error. It's now charging.

Well, I said I'd get back so here I am. After cycling the built in Vapextech pack several times it appears that I 'm getting 10 hours use, without backlight, for about 80% use of battery. That's practical but Hyperion state 18 to 50 hours depending on use of backlight. Not impressed, I will stick with Eneloop in the future.

Jeffx, there must be tons on line but here are two good books if you like reading: Model Aircraft Aerodynamics by Martin Simons The Simple Science of Flight by Henk Tenneke (my favourite) The early innovators of flight used to test wing sections by whirling them around on a bicycle wheel with the spindle vertical. It would be quite easy to knock something up to whirl a wing (with cotton tufts added) around. You could even add one of those tiny cameras on the other end of the whirling arm to record the effects on the tufts of the changes you make. Post the results here! Here's my expe

I've seen several Veron Impala on ebay, might be worth signing up for an email notification.

Thanks so much for all the useful and interesting comments. I'll cycle the pack several times (it's built in so I have to leave it switched on with backlight on to discharge) then get back to this thread and let you know what happened. Re. Dave's comments about long lasting nicads; I have some D cells from discarded emergency lighting, they must be at least 10 years old but every now and again I charge up a 24v battery made from these to do some testing. They still take a full charge and they still pack a punch. But a bit heavy!

Dave - If you join all your packs together and charge them at night you could probably cover the National Grid's peak during the day! What do you use 4cell SubC for? The pack I bought is a 5 cell "instant" AAA. Martin - I have to admit that I can't directly compare Vapextech with Eneloop; The Eneloop I use mostly in a camera and I consider them great because they last many times as long as previous Nimh in the same use. I imagine they are good for Tx and Rx batteries. The Vapextech I am "measuring" using the built in internal battery monitor in the Emeter. It returns a % number presumably

I bought a Hyperion Emeter 2, the one with separate datalogger and built in servo tester, on ebay. The internal 6v Nimh battery was almost dead, didn't respond to cycling so I thought to buy a Sanyo Eneloop pack, which I know to be excellent batteries, I use loads. But being a cheapskate I bought Vapextech at one third of the price - they loose about 5% of charge per day! Has anyone else used this brand? do they have a good or bad reputation? Just to complete the story, I did buy some Eneloop cells but wasn't paying attention and soldered two cells together. They took their revenge by

Well, I only read the first page of the Gibbs Guide but I couldn't see anything wrong with it: It contains the two "rules of thumb" that will almost guarantee that a plane will fly ok (re. electric power) !00 watts per pound as a starting point for power loading. A battery with about 1/10 C of the expected max current. What is more or less necessary then is to weigh the completed 'plane and to bench test it for power. Bench testing by holding the motor in your hand is great fun but I once had a ESC fail and remain on full power! I had to put my knee on the battery so I could use my spar

Thanks Martin, for that detailed answer. I was particularly interested if anyone in the club was experimenting with things like this, but I did find reference to direct drive servos which turned out to be conventional servos in a ply housing to directly drive ailerons on big 3d models. And Graupner (I think) brought out the "Funcopter" a few years ago which had a direct drive rotor. Yes, you would need servo current and direction signals for feedback to the sticks.

Not currently flying but still observing, and I have some questions: Little brushless motors, being used as steppers, are now used to control camera gimbals. Is anyone using them to direct drive 'plane control surfaces, or as undercarriage servos? Hobbyking is now selling big "pancake" brushless motors for quads. Is anyone using them for direct drive helicopters? Now that data downlinks are common, how far are we from my prediction of stick feedback - meaning use of a strain gauge say, to measure force on a control surface, and sending that data back to an actuator which applies pr

.... And I went to Kenley not knowing about the cancellation! Still, walked right round, saw the war memorial and blast pens(?).

I'm glad they are running repeats otherwise it was a been-and-gone kind of post. As soon as I saw it i assumed that the Lancs would be returning soon so I went to Biggin Hill to watch with the spotters, not knowing that they were going to Southend. At least I saw a Typhoon take off.

http://www.visiteastbourne.com/airbourne/ You might get to see the Lancs!

Stunning, and cool handling of the emergency at the end.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... borne.html Above is the link to a Daily Mail article about a huge collection of hand made models of very early aircraft - very nice.

I still use a pro-peak prodigy. I've used it many times for nickel, lithium and lead batteries, but it doesn't do LiFeP04, and is limited to 5 Li cells.

Short story here: http://www.vulcantothesky.org/news/508/ ... light.html ...and nice video of VC10 at Biggin Hill here: Just remembered: when I was about 10 dad took me to see nan, buying a bargain bundle of balsa on the way. While I sat drinking fizzy lemonade he carved me a model of the VC10!