Table of contents for August 2022 in RCM&E

A couple of years ago my wife was stuck for ideas for a Christmas present for me. She’s long given up on buying anything related to model aeroplanes and she is rightly a bit wary of buying things for my other main hobby of photography due to all the different makes and formats that have evolved in that industry–a bit like aeromodelling, really! Anyway, she ended up in a local art and craft store and settled on buying a beginner’s set of watercolour paints and brushes, plus a small pad of paper for me to practice on. Well, little did she know then what she had started... Roll on to the present day and whilst it will be a long time before any of my pictures will escape my sketchbooks…

Having already been fatally charmed by the build experience of the little rubber powered F4U Corsair, as produced by the Vintage Model Company a few episodes ago, I was keen to repeat the experience with another of their offerings. This time I chose the rather simpler Jodel D-18. At 18” span, this CNC cut balsa kit is from the digital pen of AJ Darby and is more intended for the beginner end of the kit market when compared to the multi-stringered Corsair. Don’t dismiss it though; there’s lots of thought gone into the design of the Jodel and it’ll take deft fingers to do it justice. Like the Corsair, the Jodel is intended to be rubber powered and comes complete with a 6” prop and an appropriate skein of rubber.…

The thing about Free Flight Scale Indoor flyers is that they just don’t care. They spend much of the winter in their sheds building their exquisitely detailed and delicate little models. Then they think nothing of dashing their creations against the unyielding breeze-block walls of some sports hall. They could add radio of course, but then they would immediately go down a notch, to being merely R/C indoor flyers. The point is, if you are a F/F Scale Indoor competitor, you have anti-freeze in your veins, you don’t know how to grimace, and your heart is a stopwatch. Duration baby, duration. MEZZANINE ME After the long pandemic break, we were all back on the road to Walsall. To our favourite Wolverhampton University Sports Hall. The hall has a handy mezzanine…

G.T. POWER C6D PRO INTELLIGENT CHARGER £68.99 I www.jperkins.com Technology has made LiPo charging pretty foolproof these days, but not totally. Set the parameters incorrectly when charging and you could have a fire on your hands, a concern that can be allayed by G.T. Power’s C6D Pro Intelligent Charger. Simply upload GTP’s Bluetooth App, use it to generate and print battery specific QR Codes (that hold the charging parameters), and attach these to your LiPos. Scan the Code using the App and the charger will recognise the parameters and automatically start charging. It’ll count the charge cycles, too. Complete with all the usual multi-chemistry charge, balance and care functions, plus a huge 300W (DC) charge power, this an extremely useful unit. LIFECOLOR PAINTING GUIDE Vol.2 £10.99 I www.airbrushes.com Following on…

Getting out in the fresh air to the new season shows has been a tonic. There are new models to see, new models to buy and replacement R/C accessories to be restocked for the shed. In the evenings at the show campsites there are old friends to share a wee dram wi’. I can report that Fat Albert (my Ford Galaxy el cheapo Do-It-Yourself stealth camper) is doing well. So far, despite over a dozen outings, I have not encountered any rain, so I have not been cooped up inside the car at all. This means that long al fresco sunset evenings have been accompanied by nifty fry-ups, with the odd brandy or Cuba Libre as a nightcap. The only Fat Albert upgrade so far has been to buy a…

BMFA CENTENARY RECORD ATTEMPT The British Model Flying Association, BMFA, (formerly the Society of Model Aeronautical Engineers Ltd.) was formed in 1922, so this year the Association has reached a grand old 100 years of age. Tasked with coming up with an event that would not only celebrate the BMFA reaching 100 but also involve as many members as possible, the centenary organising committee came up with the idea of setting a record. They noted that the US held the record for the greatest number of models flying simultaneously, which stood at 178, set at a single location, and wondered if we could beat this. Obviously getting a large number of modellers together at one location was going to present problems and wouldn’t give the regular club modeller a chance…

TESTING, TESTING | Low wing trainer The target market for this low wing trainer self-build kit will be those builders looking to move on from their basic trainer or, as in my case, someone wanting a reasonable size hack that they can throw in the back of the car at a moment’s notice. Inside the simple box you’ll find a set of control rods, a plastic canopy and two plastic bags, one with the wood pack and the other containing the hardware. The hardware pack is of good quality, with substantial aluminium wing joiner tubes. The wood pack contains all the laser cut ply and balsa sheets, plus an instruction manual and stickers. The thin moulded canopy was a little distorted where it had been squashed and it was marked…

TESTING, TESTING | F5J electric glider How time flies! It seems only yesterday that I was writing my concluding report on my current F5J class electric glider, the mightily impressive Infinity Evo. In fact, that feature appeared in the October 2020 issue of RCM&E, so it’s actually coming up for two years since the Evo was reviewed. In the meantime, the Infinity Evo has been a regular flier and my first choice whenever I’ve been sport flying with my clubmates at the local model soaring association. I’m not a competition pilot (I’ve been there, albeit as my son’s pit crew, and have the T-shirt!) so having such a model to sport fly with is a bit of a luxury. But, like most things in life, when you’ve had a taste…

My model has been modified to demonstrate one of the Beverley’s more useful features, that of dropping stores to troops on the ground by parachute (as shown in the earlier photos) and paratroops in large numbers. In real life the stores were secured to pallets with a very large parachute on top. The model version is a block of foam glued to a thin ply base, with the corners reinforced with aluminium angle extrusions from B&Q. An aluminium tube is fitted through the centre of the foam block and is connected to a cut down plastic funnel on the front face (to make alignment easier when loading). A thin cord (whipping twine from a chandlery) is secured to the foam block and extends forward to lock the loaded block in…

Réné Fournier designed the sleek and iconic RF4 in 1966. She was conceived as a fully aerobatic motor glider and sports touring aircraft. She is of all-wood construction and has a mono-wheel undercarriage that retracts into a fibreglass cowling. This is manually operated. In addition, there are two wing mounted outrigger mini-wheels and a small steerable tailwheel. She has a span of 37 feet (11.28 metres) and an elegant aspect ratio of 11.2. She originally had a VW-derived Rectimo 4 AR air-cooled flat-four engine, developing 39 hp or 29 kW. In total 169 examples have been built. She was developed from the earlier RF3 and the RF5 followed later. The only recurring maintenance issue with the RF series is the nose-wheel fork assembly, which needs regular replacement. It is a…

ON THE BEACH Here are my first two post retirement builds, both scratch built from plans supplied by Sarik Hobbies and converted from the original IC power to 4S electric. The Peter Miller designed Dalotel (MW3541) is 58” span (4” greater than on the plan) and the Fokker D.VII (MW2031) is of 53”span, designed by Gordon Whitehead. The glamour in the photo is provided by my two flying buddies, Mike of Dyffryn Ardudwy and Tony from Talybont. They are not unlike the models themselves: one quite agile for an old design, the other a veteran full of character! Nick Barsby ARGENTINIAN ELDER This model was built when we were home from the pandemic. But from the quarantine came new models of aeroplanes! This is a Top Flite Elder with a…

With my P-51D flying just great (originally featured in RCM&E, June 2013 – RC2118) and having always been a big fan of the razorback version, it was easy to select the P-51B as my next warbird project. To be honest I like the B version even more than the D version, so why I designed the D first is beyond me... So, when a clubmate asked me to design and build a P-51B for him I accepted the challenge and started the design. Is it a totally new design? No, it’s my earlier D version modified to a B. With a three-view downloaded from the internet placed over the P-51D it was easy to do the modifications, but more changes were needed than I expected... The wingspan is the same…

As mentioned last time around, the second quarter scale version of the venerable T13 Petrel was completed at about the same time as the last version of the Minimoa. This represents the pride of the UK vintage glider fleet, usually to be seen gracing the many VGC (Vintage Glider Club) rallies around the world and is now my second version of this particular beautifully restored sailplane. The maiden flight took place via aerotow at our usual CMFC venue. As well as the modified tail group, this time around I elected to fit the scale shrouded aileron set up, although, as far as I could tell on this first flight there was no perceptible difference between this and the previous top-hinged version when it came to roll response. All to the…

As time and technology move forward, recent advances in equipment and materials have now made 3D printing of complete flyable model aircraft a reality. I am not looking at the design of the models here; that is handled by one of the numerous design companies out there such as 3DLabPrint, Eclipson, Planeprint, OWL and many others. More, I am aiming to describe the modelling, printing, assembly and flying of these great new additions to our hobby. There are four basic items needed to get started with 3D printing: A printer, some filament, suitable slicing software (Cura, Prusa, Simplyfy3D etc.) and, of course, the model files of your chosen plane. The choice of printers is huge but, suffice to say, a basic hobby level machine like the Creality Ender 3 will…