Be Excellent To Each Other

I had a look a the footage last night and I had just managed to swing my mini quad round to catch the last little piece of it fluttering down like sad confetti. Harrowing.

Managed to snap this nice shot of our kid's little Spitfire, though:

Great picture, Mark

Cheers!


I spent most of the weekend turning the dumping ground of a garage into a compact combined workshop/plane room/gym/bar. Spent almost nothing on this so far. After the many tip runs were done I threw a load of old emulsion onto the walls. Then for the workbench I've used a fire door and a piece of kitchen worktop that we had lying around. I did buy a light fitting and some LED bulbs from Screwfix, though. And also some long shelf brackets that are going to make plane holders on the walls. And some shorter ones that I'm going to use to make shelves out of all the old skateboard decks that I've been hoarding for no reason whatsoever. I also need to pick up one of those draughtsman's chairs in case I want to sit down and work on stuff and then a dartboard that I can hang on the back of the garage door.

That looks awesome! My garage is going to be something similar once I get a shed to store the gardening tools but yeah, awesome!

That looks good Mark. It's actually quite inspiring as I need to do something with my garage. As soon as the missus does something about the LITERAL heap of baby toys and car seats that are taking up a large portion of the current space of course

Yep, that's what I had to deal with, it was amazing though to see how much crap we'd accumulated when it was all laid out on the driveway. Still got a small mound that needs to go to a charity shop and then tackle the loft.

Exactly this, oddly.

Spitfire pic reminds me of 'faked UFO' pics from Usbourne books. Brilliant capture that with the light.

Such a shame you didn't catch the Vampire folding up. Had a look last night for a suitable airframe to put the guts into. There's another Vampire of course (although can't find the airframe on it's own) and also this!

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/produc ... 17785.html

Honestly that looks like it'll fly like crap. Also not sure that many people would be too stoked to see something that looks like a military drone pottering round.

I'll put smiley face stickers on it.



It's supposed to be a horrible build too. I'll keep looking for another Vampire I think, but keep your eyes out for a suitable host frame too plz.

There's a cheap hawk kit on Hobbyking too, but not read up on how they fly yet. I'll do that now that I'm in work.

Hmm, sounds good from what I've just read. UK stock too.

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/bae-hawk-re ... e-epo.html

In the meantime I'm going to get the Skyraider going again. I think I borrowed some Y leads from it to get my Mini Skyhunter built.

Can you get one of these? Potential for upsetting even more people but you could build a real working pulse jet!

I'd love to mess with a pulse jet but it's hard to put into words how loud even a small one is.

In other news I beat my personal FPV speed record when we were out yesterday morning (bit of a cheaty dive though to scrape it past 100mph):



Motor seemed to be well within limits, though. So next time out I'll try a prop with more pitch and see if it can go faster still before anything melts.

Cor. Was that with your printed one?

No, I doubt that'll even go half that speed. It was one of these:

http://flyingwings.co.uk/fpv-uav/fpv-wi ... -wing.html

Cor, that looks like a nimble little thing. Is it hard to fly?

If you can fly already then it's very straightforward but it's definitely not something that would work for learning. It just goes exactly where you point it and it's really responsive. Planes that are good for learning tend to fly a fair bit slower and have a tendency to naturally just fly themselves and self-correct.

So you're saying "crash a few cheap ones first"?

Not really, a wing like that, minus all the camera kit, can be about as cheap as it gets. It's more case of just starting with something that'll give you a fighting chance. The best thing to do though is get a sim and after a dozen hours on there you won't necessarily need to crash much at all but even then you would be better off starting with a trainer type plane.

Can you recommend a sim?

Beex brother

Too soon.

Torn between getting one of those new wings or a Hawk kit for my EDF guts now.

Swaying more towards the 70mm Hawk for now then a wing for when my Mini Skyhunter becomes unrepairable and I can use all the GPS gubbins from it. Both just a touch over £50.

Something like this would do:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Plane-Master-U ... B0030Z9X3M

You can get more advanced, accurate and expensive sims but all beginners usually crash for the same reasons. Mostly they don't give the right inputs once the plane is flying towards them or else they let it get too far way (that can happen really quickly). If you get this and practice until you're not thinking about which way to move the sticks whatever the orientation of the plane then you've got a massive headstart.

Does that Hawk hand launch ok? I'm guessing it will.

If you bought the wing then you'd probably also need a new motor, ESC and some metal geared servos. Not loads of cash but it adds up.

Yeah, from what I've read it sounds like it does.

I know they'll all pay for themselves in the end but that hawk is almost like it's paying me to get it. It's cheaper than the replacement Vampire Airframe.

The wing is probably more versatile though, fly on windier days and suchlike. Will your Vampire definitely not mend?

Not now I've stripped everything out and thrown the foam away, no.

It was all sorts of broken mate, twisted and torn. Practically every part of it had damage. Thought it was time to let it go.

I suppose I could get both.

I'll crowd fund the Hawk and set up a Kickstarter for the wing.

I've sent an email to the birthday fairy about the Hawk.

Hopefully I've been a good boy this year.

New plane get!

Been looking at these for ages and then the other day they popped up in a sale so I crumbled:



Proper all-terrain plane. Comes with floats, massive wheels for flying off rough ground as well as an alternate canopy for adding cameras etc.

This is tearing me apart.

Just pop round, you can have a sniff of the wheels:

She's all done then?

Got my fancy mini camera through today.

Yeah, it's a Plug N Fly, or rather fettle, sand, drill, fettle, wrestle, plug, plug, plug, plug, plug, plug, unplug, unplug, unplug, plug, plug, plug, fettle more and then fly. Still only a hour's work though, went together really nicely as these things go. And the bag of screws were missing but I had some that would work.

Look forward to seeing this in action.

Going to get back into my Bixler, might even use the motor / esc from the mini skyhunter to give it a little more oomph. It'll be a little heavier once the Cyclops Storm is in there.

Had a good fly today despite a stupid error that grounded my new Mini Hornet wing early on (all glued back and modifications made for next time).

Rounded the day off following MarkG's new plane, a Durafly Tundra.

So now I'm looking at these as I'm missing my Vampire :

http://www.redsradiocontrol.com/spring- ... 1218-p.asp

http://www.redsradiocontrol.com/spring- ... 1054-p.asp

But leaning more towards this:

http://www.redsradiocontrol.com/64mm-fr ... 1056-p.asp

Fly well with a 2200 3s lipo apparently too so that's convenient.

Banggood have a really nice looking FMS 1100 Zero in the EU warehouse with an extra 20% off too... my birthday money is screaming at everything at the moment.

Already got a nice scale Skyraider to fly but I love Zeroes.

Nice video! All those planes look good. You should just buy them all and then decide which is your favourite.

I knew you'd be along with the right advice.

Leaning towards the Mig but it's the only one not in stock, and costs a little more.

Going to be sensible and smash up my Skyraider first.

Bloody joggers on our airfield.

I see you bring chairs now

Well you don't fly real planes standing up.

True.

Took a floatplane up to the lakes with us, never tried flying off water before. Good fun.