What's It all About ???

This page is all about the building and flying of radio controlled model aircraft. It's a highly diversified hobby that takes in as many skills as you like to use. Everything from electronics to carpentry, to painting, to drawing and designing with a little bit of metal work thrown in. Some builders even go into doing their own machining, pattern designing, fibre glassing, moulding and engine design. You can use electric motors, 2 stroke or 4 stroke internal combustion engines or even minature turbine (jet) engines for power. My own models use 2 and 4 stroke internal combustion engines and range in size from about a metre in wingspan to well over 3 metres from tip to tip!


Thursday, January 27, 2011

Progress - What Progress?

Have you ever noticed how contradictory the model aircraft hobby can be? If you decide to spend the day on a building/rebuilding/repairing binge then the weather will be so damn good you just have to grab something and go flying. Conversely if you spend hours charging batteries and pre flighting models, getting all your gear together, ringing up mates to meet at the field then one hour before you are ready to leave for the field the damn wind will come up to something like a force ten gale or the clouds will roll in and a thunderstorm worthy of end of times will split the heavens.


Anyhow of late Murphy (of Murphy's Rules) and I have had a few altercations and in spite of a hanger full of models I'm down to three that are flyable. One is a high wing trainer that has more years on it than I do, for Aussie fliers they may recognise it as one of the original tail dragger Aeroflyte Hustlers. (Yep, I'm THAT old!). The second is an equally ancient P47 Thunderbolt and the third is my first attempt at a multi engined model, a Magnum. All the models could probably qualify for the old age pension.


How did I get in this mess? Well - errr. I like to build, from scratch, which means I start off with a plan and a heap of timber and go from there, no ARF @#$%! things will ever pollute my model collection and any one who swears in my presence by mentioning el*ctr*c THINGS will be banished to the down wind end of the runway. So the quandary is I have all these 'works in progress' and the bloody sun keeps shining and I want to go fly. The problem is this equation:-


Models ready to fly                  Models under construction                Number of crashes             Hours in the day
-----------------------          x             -----------------------------------         x       ---------------------------           x    -------------------          =  CHAOS
Models  flown                      Square root of balsa supplies           recoverable bits                       available hours


I'm sure many modellers are familiar with this equation and some may even know the corollary where chaos is equal to the reciprocal of flying skill!  I still maintain that the latter is only a theory and has not been proved so it is not written into the laws of model flight - YET.  Then again there will be some smart arse who thinks my mathematics might be the problem in the first case.


So for those hardy souls who are foolish enough to follow my rambling on this blog here is an update.
  • I've finally found a set of scale wheels for the Piper J3. Gee they look good and the model is now almost finished.
  • The new fuselage for the float plane is finished and I'm fitting the motor and servos.
  • The Harvard has the motor and retracts back in and I'm building a scale cockpit fit out for it.
  • The model that hit the rocks is gradually being rebuilt.


The 'REBUILD' wall!


Those lovely Cub wheels


CHAOS!

I've just bought a set of plans for a DH2 off eBay. I'm in love - all that timber and wire - and  a 60 pusher for power! SOB!! Another model I just have to build
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