Unfortunately I am a bit late this month. A couple of weeks troubleshooting the weather station, some EOY finances for a couple of accounts I do and a little battle with some health issues. Nevermind, I got their in the end, so hopefully the wait was worth it.
STOP PRESS
Max Wiggins advises (August 5) that Kevin Swiggs has been admitted to hospital with another bout of COVID. His wife Jan also has COVID but is resting at home. Let’s all wish Kevin and and Jan a speedy recovery.
Club day – Saturday, July 6
A cold start to the day, with most of the regulars in attendance – Danny N, Fred W, George & Kerry C, Ray and Micah G, Kevin H, Liam & Phil E, Mark H, Max W, Meilin H, Nara T and his friend Rod, Pete K, Peter S, Rodney K and Vince B.
What was evident on the day was the poor state of the strip. Anyone who had a heavy model and tried to taxi from the southern gate, were confronted with a “bog” patch, that had models picking up a sticky mud on the undercarriage of their models. Greg R commented on how long it took to not only clean the wheels but also the underside of the fuselage and the wings. More on this later in the article.
Notwithstanding the state of the strip, it was a good day, with a few different models on display. I believe our newest member Phillip (a new member but present at every working bee and nearly every club day) was given some flying lessons from his son Liam. What a joy to see father and son enjoying some memorable time together. Liam gave his father the thumbs up and a cheeky “he still has a bit to learn”. A few shots from the day –
I prepared a montage of activity on the flight line that is shown in the video below.
It’s been a long time since we saw a helicopter at Symmons Plains, but Peter K broke the drought and brought along his TRex 700X “Dominator”. This model, minus the “Dominator” body, will form the basis of his scale helicopter referred to in a previous HT and an update appears later in this post.
- Manufacturer: Align Models (Taiwan)
- Length: 1320mm
- Main Rotor Diameter: 1582mm
- Tail Rotor Diameter: 281mm
- Weight(With Battery): Approx. 5100g
- 850MX Brushless Motor(490KV/4535) x 1
- DS820M High Voltage Brushless Servo x 3
- DS825M High Voltage Brushless Servo x 1
- RCE-BL130A Brushless ESC x 1
- Microbeast PLUS Flybarless System x 1
- 6S Li-Po 4500 ~ 5200mAh x 2 ( a 12S Setup!)
Looking at the model on the ground, in comparison to a fixed wing aircraft, it looks surprisingly small however, we then find out that it requires a 12S LiPo battery! That is a lot of available energy with a nominal 44.4v and 50.2v fully charged. This brought about another question Peter raised with me. He was concerned that when he plugged in the battery, there was a noticeable spark and was there anything he could do about it or was that normal? With high voltages we often see a brief spark when we connect terminals. It’s normal that it will spark because you are connecting to a discharged capacitor(s). You can help somewhat by plunging the connectors together as quickly as possible, but about the only way you can eliminate the sparking entirely is to switch to anti-spark connectors.
Anti-Spark Connectors
These have a resistor that limits the current initially to allow the capacitors to charge over a few tens of milliseconds instead of trying to go to zero to full battery voltage instantly. When using these, check that the ESC powers normally as for some, the microcontrollers in these ESC’s must be powered up quickly, and the use of a high resistance value resistor in the anti-spark units could affect that process.
Peter Kidson’s Scale Helicopter Project – 2
Peter has responded to my regular requests from members to pass on some information/pictures on their latest project. Here is a bit of running commentary from Peter on his project.
Made a start. I’m sure at the Airbus factory they have better supports for the fuselages than I do but they probably don’t have to trim where the tailbone fits on to get the vertical fin perpendicular to the fuselage. Some changes have to be made to the woodwork as the supplied templates are for a different set of mechanics than I’m using.
After much modification due to a badly moulded tailboom I finally got it glued on and ‘straight’. Also managed to get the navigation lights fitted and the fins glued to the horizontal stabilisers. The last thing I did was to mount the woodwork in the fuselage.
This particular fuselage(EC145 by Airbus) is designed around the Vario Benzine mechanics so I have to make some changes as I go so the woodwork supports my Align T-Rex mechanics.
More filling done as the top hatches left a little to be desired. This is Jake. I told him that’s probably not the correct saw to cut the windows out with, I’m glad he listened. (I asked Pete if this was the same “Jake” from our magazines back in 2001?)
Yep he wanted to remain anonymous but he’s been taking helicopter lessons so him and one other are the crew. There may be a third as I have an Action Man but he’s been badly chewed by mice and has a big hole in his chest and loads of teeth marks on his outfit. Just looks like he’s been blown up.
Public opinion may say I can’t use him as it’s too gory. Which means I might stick him on the interior deck as a dead body not being left behind.
For those that don’t know, “Jake” was a character that Peter wrote about in a few articles for our paper magazine that circulated in 2001 (before the website was constructed). If you want to read about Jake, and more of the club’s history, check out the Proper Torque magazines here
Membership Renewals
Thank you to everyone who paid their fees promptly. It certainly makes it easier for me and for those upstream processing at the TMAA and the MAAA. Unfortunately we lost two members. The reasons were that their lives were a bit busier with other activities –
- Peter Armstrong – a member for 7 years but hasn’t flown for the last 2 years.
- Malcolm Watson – a member for 14 years but he has been go-karting competitively for a number of years. Mal has rejoined as a Social member as he enjoys to visit and keep in touch with the members.
Thank you to both Peter and Malcolm for their membership over the years and should their paths bring them back to aeromodelling again, we’d love to see you rejoin. The good news is that a previous Associate, Vincent Garrett has joined as a full member. When conditions improve, Max has offered his services to ensure Vincent gets his Silver Wings ASAP.
Annual Dinner
Don’t forget that the Annual Dinner will be held on Saturday, September 21 this year. Details can be found here
Weed Spraying and Strip Condition
Further to my comment in the Club day section, I mentioned last month that Mark had sprayed the strip for weeds. We then were to follow up once Seona came back from her annual leave in early August. That will still happen. However in the meantime an inspection of the strip last week (Friday, August 2) revealed extensive damage caused by grubs or slugs. In fact they have decimated the strip and it appears now to be devoid of grass in many areas, with the exception of the pits. I have spoken with Ron and he will get Seona to provide us with a strategy going forward. The first step will be to rid the strip of the grubs that are eating the sweet new shoots of grass.
Weather Station Software Update
We had some problems after the hack in June and subsequently the weather and camera uploads stopped for about 2 weeks. The biggest problem related to the SIM card that sends the data to our website. The club has been paying $160pa for a SIM card. Annually we were using less than 4GB but paying for 70GB per annum (the minimum). I have a plan that gives me 215GB a month and I only use about 2gb a month, so why not add LMAC to my plan and save the club some money.
Then the problems started. Telstra online converted the LMAC SIM to an eSIM (which is incompatible with the dongle we use) and so our weather went offline. Many more calls to Telstra, a new physical SIM received but didn’t work, then eventually a trip to the Telstra shop who inserted another new SIM in the dongle but it appeared not to work and the assistant said it was due to the in-store “wifi security”. That was hard to believe that they sell dongles but can’t test them in store?? They then sent me off to try on site. When I got home, I tried it again and still it was not working. I opened up the dongle and found the Telstra tech had put the SIM card in “back to front”!! I swapped it around and it was working again. Back to the field with my son Stuart, who modified the software and we were up and running again.
TIP: Did you know that if you hover your mouse over a dial (or lightly touch on a mobile device) in [Gauges], that you get more information (see below). Also look for the little red triangle in any of the gauges, and that is the peak for the day.
Peter Daniel’s Collections
Peter was waiting in the arrivals lounge at Launceston airport, going through his photos and thought he’d send me some pictures of his models over the years. With the exception of the Zero, ALL of these models were scratch built – quite an effort. I asked Peter if I could share them on HT and he said, “if you think it worthwhile..”. Of course I thought you’d all like to see some of his models.
Flight Modes – courtesy of Model Airplane News.
Flight-Modes-101From the WWW
Kevin Hay sent me a video clip of a jet powered glider. The clip was embedded in Facebook and difficult to post here, so I did a search for some others on the web, and came up with this impressive display. RC modellers will try anything to push the boundaries!
Well that’s it for another month, and with all the cold weather keeping people away from the field, there must be some workshop projects underway. If so, send me some pictures and details for next month.
Don’t Forget – Put a Spark in your life and fly electric!
George
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