• Added a little page about the S-Pou with a gallery of some shots taken during the build.
• The P51 has flown, not without incident but promising!
• I picked up a bargain at Wings and Wheels - A ParkZone Pole Cat for 40 quid!
• Also picked up an AcroWot! Very chuffed with this, looking forward to the build and getting it airborne.
• I’ve added a page about my xmas present, the Cambrian P-51.
• I had a few moments spare, and enough stuff lying around that I knocked up a Sharkface.
• The Sukhoi is no more, but…
• A LiddleRod was built to house its electronics.

So a few weeks past and our tank is settling in nicely, it was time to return to the Fish shop and get the first occupants.  The nice chap at the shop advised us that Zebra Danios were a nice starter fish and they look pretty cool, all silvery and stripey. Because our family now numbers four we had to have one each! They seem quite happy in their new home, it has been a few days and all four are still alive 🙂

According to Wikipedia they are a native of the Himalayan region and are a common home aquarium fish. Well they seem to be settling in quite nicely in North London!

A little while ago we noticed that our toddler was showing an interest in the fish tank at a local library, I’ve always fancied an aquarium so it was decided we should get a little one for home.

After speaking to a couple of friends who are very seriously into keeping fish and chatting to a local fish specialist I decided to buy a 48 litre starter tank. I was advised that much smaller could be an upkeep nightmare and anything much bigger started to push the budget!  The model we went for was a Interpet Fish Pod 48l which we bought from the local supplier.

It came with a heater, pump, lights and a little thermometer. All we needed was some gravel, plants and of course fish!

The picture over there is of the finished tank all setup and filled with water. I was advised to leave it like this, without fish for a couple of weeks before going to get some ‘hardy’ fish at first.  So now we wait for a little while before we go and get some fishes!

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I’ve been pondering designing my own RC plane for a while, not completely from scratch mind, but a scale job. Sports-scale probably better defines my intentions, I’ve neither the time nor patience to spend hundreds of hours on reproducing a scale model in minute detail. There have been a couple of free plans in the mags recently (Tims Airspeed Courier springs to mind) of about 60" span with electric power, which have got me thinking.

Over the Christmas period I took my son to the RAF Museum at Hendon, while wandering around one of the halls a little aircraft from the thirties caught my eye, a Miles M.12 Mohawk. I thought this was a pretty little plane, looking nice in the orange and black colour scheme. Looking it over for a while I started to think this might make a nice scale candidate. There was nothing too awkward about the shape, nice tapered (but not too sharply) wings, a reasonable length nose. Hmm, maybe this would be the one chose.

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On returning home I did some digging and found a bit more information on Wikipedia, and a little 3 view here (Broken link ~~http://home.comcast.net/~aero51/html/gallery/m12.htm~~). That’ll do to get me started, I also wanted to practice using CAD, so it was decided then. First step I wanted to do was trace the 3 view into CAD, from there I could scale it to whatever size felt appropriate and then start to work on the internal structure.

The specs of the original are as follows:

<td align="right" width="88">
  25.5 feet
</td>

<td align="right">
  35 feet
</td>

<td align="right">
  183 sq feet
</td>

Having done a bit of maths, 1/8 scale would give me a span of 53 inches with a wing area of 412 sq. inches. That feels about right for the same power plant that Timused in the Courier. 1/7 scale gives 58 inch span with an area of 508 sq inches, I might end up going for that, I want to chat to some people first, to see what they think.

So anyway, to cut a long story short, in a few spare moments over the last week, I’ve traced the 3 view. Its pretty complete, a few of the curves need a little work if you zoom right in, which I’ll try and tidy up to the point I’m completely happy with. There is a png of the cad file below if you are interested.

You can click on any of the images on this page bigger versions, if you want the full size of the 3 view below, click here.

 Thats all for now, I want to do a little tidying up and then start thinking about the internal structure.

So its maiden flight wasn’t without drama, however it has survived and has been aloft four times now. Loving flying it, I’ve pretty much got my box circuits down, and I’ve done a couple of take offs and landings. Need to practice the figure of eights a bit more though!

I’ve made a page for it here.

Partly because we are having a general tidy up in preparation for the new baby and partly because I want to raise some funds for a Blade 450, I’ve decided the HPI Savage has to go.

I’ve tried starting it a few times recently and got it running, but as soon as I throttled up it stalled. I’d pretty much given up with it when I had a brainwave: send it to Peter down at 308 Holloway Road and see if he could make it work. Turns out after a bit of heads scratching he found a speck of dirt in the carb. No it’s running sweet, already to go up on eBay tomorrow.

One last video of me testing it after I got it back this morning.

So after nearly a year of sitting around unused, its gone on ebay. So long Easystar, I had fun flying you. More info here.

If you ever see this user on the Amazon marketplace don’t order from them. I bought something from them, they never shipped it and never responded to any communications.

Ended up having to go elsewhere and cancel the order. I should have noticed in the feedback that nobody had purchased anything for 3 months. This SHOULD (!) have been a big warning to me, let it be to you!

Avoid moviecollector77 at all costs, its less effort to go somewhere else right from the start.

I’ve finally got round to uploading some pics I took while building the Scorcher, body is not painted yet. I’ll hopefully find the time to do that before long!

More details over on the Sand Scorcher page here.

Its taken me nearly 5 months to make this, but I finally got round to it!

A photo of Edward each day for his first year..