The venerable old Edge is still being thrown about quite a lot. I’m trying to practice aerobatics with it rather than just chucking the sticks into the corners. Minor updates to its page here,  it survived a pretty big ’landing’ recently. It is back in the air but isn’t quite as nice to fly as it once was, still loads of fun though!

The Tyro page has been updated here, with news of my plans to alter it to be powered by an outrunner.

I’ve tidied the page about the funfighter a little bit. It hasn’t been flown it in 18 months or so, typically favouring the Acro Wot when I get to fly IC, but due to restrictions our club have on when IC models can be flown I’m finding that I am mostly flying electric these days. I am considering removing the motor and replacing it with an outrunner, but I can’t quite face cutting into it! Between the Tucano, which flies similarly and the recently purchased Balsacraft Spitfire maybe there isn’t room for it in the hanger anymore and as a result I am thinking about selling it. Its tough to part with an airframe I built though!

I’ve updated the page about the Beaver, it is now hung in my office where, I expect it shall remain. It was a thoroughly enjoyable build but flying free flight isn’t really my thing. I have a few other projects in mind up next, but I expect some day I’ll build another Guillows kit.  The gallery of the build is here.

Ever since I finished the Sea Nymph for my son there have been arguments over who should get to play with it when we are down at the local lake. The obvious solution to this was to build another one! This time however I have taken a different tack, rather than buy a full kit I decided to look for an old boat I could renovate.

A chance browse of ebay last week found a possible candidate with only a tenner bid on it, it was collection only but Barnet is a pretty quick drive from here. This sounded promising… So today I won the auction for £17.55 and a new 29" boat was mine! I dropped the seller a mail and he was happy to have me collect it today, so off I popped to Barnet to fetch it home.

It is 29 1/2 " long with a beam of 9 1/2" so is substantially larger than the Nymph. Initially I thought it was a Sea Queen, or perhaps a Sea Commander. But since getting it home I’ve realised it is neither of those, a quick post onto the model boat mayhem forums found the answer, it is actually a Sea Rover.

The two pics from the auction are below, I’ll post more when I start work on her but I expect that’ll be a little while because there is, as ever, a queue of projects!

Just as I was logging in to WordPress to write this, I noticed that it is a month to the day since I last wrote about the Beaver. Well I’m happy to report it is now finished and awaiting a maiden flight. Weighing in at 69g is on the heavy side, but I always knew with that much paint there was no chance of a light build, hey ho! I like the way it turned out looking at least and in reality I expect it it will spend most of its life hanging up and not flying.

It was a very enjoyable build, very nicely designed and with accurate laser cutting, all the parts going together well without much fiddling. It is tempting to try another Guillows kit now, perhaps the Edge 540?

Having said that it will spend its life hanging up, I am coming around to the idea of taking the Beaver, the RedWing and the TomTit to Old Warden to give them a little airing in the free flight area, fingers crossed I’ll aim for the MayFly. To that end I’ve bought 20 yards of rubber and some lubricant, so I’m prepared!

A full gallery of all the pics I took during the build can be found here, and the page for the model is here.

After what feels like quite a long wait for the new canopy, I’ve managed to get over to Northwick Park to maiden the Pulse. Lovely October afternoon, a little breeze, almost no clouds in the sky with glorious sunshine. Perfect conditions!

I put 3 packs through her, all completely uneventful, which is how I like it. I tried a few gentle aerobatic manoeuvres and she had ample power to pull round a loops without even using full throttle. I’m now pleased I didn’t bother putting the bigger motor and 4s setup in her.

I had thought about rigging up the ailerons as flaperons, but now I’ve seen how she handles at low speed I’m not going to bother. The stall showed itself with a very slight mushing around, no worrying wing drops thankfully! And landing with just under idle power meant she just floated on and on.

I’ve updated the page for the Pulse which is here. I’ll update that with any significant updates!

[]({{ “/uploads/2013/09/photo-1-1.jpg” | prepend: site.baseurl }})So about 8 weeks ago while we were down here in Wiltshire, I flew the Dynamic-S up at the White Horse and made a bit of a dumb error in reading the wind. I thought it was coming along the slope and hitting the bowel, but I learnt the hard way that actually it was coming from slightly behind the hill causing some horrible turbulence  around my normal take off and landing spot.  Well, to cut a long story short the DS had a bit of a rough landing, the nose snapping clean off, but otherwise causing no damage.  I had a good ponder about how to get her back in the air, eventually deciding that a new fuselage at £20 or so was the easiest and probably safest route.

[]({{ “/uploads/2013/09/Screen-Shot-2013-09-29-at-21.40.04.png” | prepend: site.baseurl }})HobbyKing UK didn’t have them in stock in August, but they came in a week or so ago, just in time for me to transplant the gubbins and get her ready for this weekend which was our next planned trip out west.  Friday say a nice day, but with no wind, so I flew her from the flat field at the top of the hill, about an 8 minute flight with no unpleasant surprises.

Today the wind was blowing about 15mph from the North East,  swinging round to ENE at times. That meant I had to use the eastern edge of the slope, of which I have less experience. I need’nt have worried however, she was up in the air for a good 30 minutes, with still a few minutes of battery left when I landed so she could have easily flown for longer. Brilliant flight, lovely aircraft on a surprise sunny September afternoon.

I’m becoming more confident with her, rolls are nice and axial and I’m practising slow rolls with rudder fed in to keep altitude. I even managed a inverted circuit, it was a little rough, but I made it all the way round 🙂

I’ve included a little pic below so you can see the view I have while I’m up on the hill.

[]({{ “/uploads/2013/09/photo-2-1.jpg” | prepend: site.baseurl }})

So a while back I managed to stuff my Edge 540 hitting the nose quite hard and breaking the prop. When I picked it up I noticed the rudder was all loose suggesting I had stripped the gears in the rudder servo.  No worries I thought, how could it be to find a new servo? Well the answer is, quite tough indeed!  The official part # is EFLR7100, I couldn’t find any UK stockists and going by the USD price I figured if I could find one it would likely be 20 quid or so which seemed a little steep.

After quite a search I found the TGY-D1290P from Hobby King, this fitted perfectly, even including the little JST connectors enabling it to connect directly to the AR6310 Spektrum RX which is supplied with the aircraft.  There is a handy extension cable buried in the fuselage, so the length of cable supplied with the servo is sufficient.

I’ve had four flights since replacing the servo, all good!

So I’ve started another build, this time though I’ve decided to build something smaller. I’ve got quite a few RC planes sitting around and I’m not getting much time to fly them, so that got me thinking: What could I build which would be enjoyable but wouldn’t either cost much, or take up much room.

After a bit of a ponder I hit upon the idea of a small rubber powered free flight model.  A bit of research and I happened on the lovely Guillows kit of the Beaver, an aircraft I’ve always thought pretty.

The build has only just started, with just a few formers being fixed to the central fuselage crutch, I’m uploading pics as I go to the gallery here. The pic below shows the left hand formers drying.