Be Excellent To Each Other

Yeah, or £60 in the shops here. Get one and we'll have races and that.

I think I will.

It would make a perfect Birthday gift.

It would have done but you just ruined the surprise.

Maybe next year then, eh?

Yep, I belive you can. But the Spit airframe costs £75 or something, I think, and you can get the complete thing for £109! I may as well get a Ripmax balsa Spitfire for £80, if I'm going to do that.


It can't be more floaty than the GWS Beaver! The PZ instructions for the Cub reckoned it could cope with a few mph of wind but I've always only flown on calm days anyway, as there's no sense in complicating the learning process.

Will be entertaining getting my hand back in, as it's been 18 months or so since my last flight.

I'm actually going to pop up to the hills after work to fly one of these things that I got the other week:

http://www.northcountyflyingmachines.com/M60.htm

Electric, though. Now I've had a nitros powered truck I don't ever want to go back to electric.

With the motors and batteries you can get now I've found exactly the opposite, I don't know much about cars but for planes glow engines are fast becoming obsolete as you can achieve greater power to weight and similar run times with electric. The only IC I'd bother with would be if I wanted something much larger and then it would be petrol, at these sizes electric is still pretty expensive and once you make the jump from glow fuel to normal petrol the running costs are low.

I was passing a model shop the other day and ended up buying one of these little trucks. They're properly brilliant for the size of them and the money. I can't believe what they've managed to squeeze in, adjustable diff and really nice suspension setup. It drives just like a proper bigger one only scaled down.

Is it not bouncy as hell?

It's actually not as bad as you might imagine with the very simple shocks. It's so small and light that they are more than up to it. It seems to cope with pretty big jumps and keeps pointing forwards anyway. Obviously it isn't as sophisticated as larger, more expensive ones but for messing around in the house it's ace.

Ali Machinchy's new absolute masterpiece of a Spitfire built by Phil at Fighteraces. 1/4 scale and electric powered but with a sound generator and big speakers on board so that it doesn't sound like a flying petrol strimmer:

http://www.aircraftinaction.com/Alis_Spitfire_Roger.WMV

I want one.

Took the Parkzone Super Cub out the last two nights. It's *brilliant*. Very easy to fly, and despite initially being a bit rusty with the "no! no! no! THAT'S left!" issue of working out which way to push the stick when the plane's head on, I was getting it in some nice circuits and doing a few touch and gos. It is approximately 5,437,689 times better than the GWS Beaver, and at least half of that's just due to the decent landing gear.

On the downside, on night one I had a few calves wander up and watch, which was disconcerting, and night two a giant bee (seriously, the size of a Mini Cooper) attacked me while I was trying to land. I DID IT THOUGH, oh yes. I am fighter pilot.

vids pls

I'll need to get Mrs C up there with me, which would require the kids too, and they'd try and get on the plane. I guess I could try one handed flying. As it were. But I'd have no access to the throttle, which would be a whole other double entendre.

You need a helmet with a video camera on it, but then we'd need to see video of you stood in a field wearing a helmet with a video camera on it, and we'd be back to square one.

Also congratulations, it's always nice when you don't bring them home in a bin bag.

Has anyone had a go at the XBLC game? If so, is it anything like flying a real radio-controlled plane? I found it quite easy.

The what? Can you rustle up a link plz

Go to Community Games. It's called Radio-Controlled Airplane or something equally original.

Yeah, indeed. I stacked my first plane on its first flight. It was a 4 channel Zero, however, so I was overreaching a bit and deserved it. The Beaver was fine for some basic learning, but was a bit of a wallowing pig due to lack of power and impossible-to-get-right CoG issues. Still, it aught me how to get a plane in the air and keep it there without fighting it every second.

I'm glad I went for the Cub rather than the Spitfire at this stage, mind, as I think I need a fair bit of practice before going for something like that.

Oh yeah, I was going to mention this. It's like a barebones version of the PC trainer you have Mark.

Just checked this out. It's very slow compared to a real one in terms of the control response, it's also far smoother and a lot more predictable, the physics seems incredibly basic with no turbulence or indeed any wind at all. That said if you put lots of time into it so that everything was second nature you would fare better than someone who never used a sim at all.

WANT

[img]http://www.squadronleader.co.uk/pub/files/Planes/hawker%20sea%20fury/product%[/img]

That does look nice and E-Flight are usually good. You'll probably need a smooth surface if you want to use the retractable undercarriage though.

Possibly a question for Grim... - my brother has an old Tamiya RS2000 which needs repairing and putting back on the road, and he's going to let me have it. Are Tamiya's insides proprietary (e.g. the connectors and that)? If so where would be best for getting bits that work on a 15 year old car?

Also - is the Tamiya Lunchbox any good at all?

No, it's all the standard connectors and servos as far as I remember.

I have no clue about Tamiya's, but I suspect Kalmar is right and it uses the same bits as everything else.
What's wrong with it?

Mr Chris's Brother: "It doesn't go"
Me: "Why not?"
MCB: "No idea."

Not sure, until I look at it. It could be something as simple as the battery pack being dead (it's a 15 year old nicad, ffs), or the motor having rusted to fuck after being run through water once too often by a 15 year old MCB. Or the receiver, or the ESC (electric RC cars have those, right?).

I'm getting it tomorrow night, so may start a "Mr Chris Builds a Tomcat Car" thread then. I'm thinking of what sort of shell to buy for it. Something silly, I think, which I will then Barry up to the max.

I always wanted a Tamiya RC car...

Me too. Every year when we went to the Toronto Car Show, there'd be a room on the lower level where they'd be racing them around a little track.

Grasshopper kits with radio gear are luringly priced...

WANT
http://www.rccarsandtrucks.co.uk/468_1_105445815.html

This is the chap (not my photo):



Bodyshell's fucked, though, so will need replacing.

To be honest you'd probably be better off getting a new one rather than spending any amount of cash on that. Loads of second hand bargains to be had as lots of people buy them, race them around a car park for a bit and get bored or break a minor part and then just sell them.

That's much less fun, mind.

Hopefully all I'll need is a new nicad. It transpires he got a new Scooby bodyshell for it so that should be okay.

I'm looking forward to stripping it to pieces and rebuilding it, to be honest. I'll check the radio gear and engine, but I think it's unlikely that the receiver, ESC and engine have all gone, so if I just have to replace one of those for £20 I'm doing well compared to buying a whole second had car.

You mean motor!
[/electric car nerd]

True enough. I'm not sure about 15 years ago but certainly the Tamiyas I've built and messed around with didn't have ESCs but just a big coil of resistance wire with a little arm attached to a servo that swept along the top. If it has that I'd fuck it off and put a suitable brushed ESC in there. You might also find that rather than getting a new NiCad or more likely NiMh you can just stick one of your LiPos from a plane in there.

I only have nimhs from my Beaver and Super Cub - wrong connectors, too. So a new battery pack it is - but for a 7.2v 1400nmh it won't be shocking.

I've found a manual and it does have an ESC - massive bloody thing, too.

1400mAh is tiny, it may have been state of the art at the time but I guess you can get 2200 or 2400mAh packs cheaply now - lots more range.

Hey, electric boy! Who are you calling tiny? My flight packs are 900s, and I get 10 minutes flying out of those.

But yeah, I found 2400 racepack for £10, so that's the ticket.

Also see if there's room to fit a 9.6V pack, you usually can (motor just wears out a bit quicker) and the thing will be loads quicker.

Also you should buy a 2200mAh LiPo for your Parkzone plane. If you look in the book it will probably tell you how to activate the low voltage cutoff on the ESC. I have one of their Typhoon aerobatic things and it's lighter, faster and runs more than twice as long with the LiPo.

Nitro cars FTW, obviously.
I haven't had my Riot out since I started building the Tomcat

1.4AH, 7.2V? Pah. My car has 132V, 200AH. 2,640 times bigger.

My car is 10 times smaller, so you still win on power to weight.

Probably cost more per weight though (don't ask..)

Do the Electric Sipping Pocket Money Pits need their own thread? Seems to have been going on a while.

There's already an RC thread that a mod could split it into if they feel that way inclined:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=126&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=rc+planes

You need to combine hobbies and make sure that your Tomcat can be radio-controlled too.