Duchess

Well I remember reading an article in Aeromodeller about control line biplane stunters and one of those was (the) Duchess. Well I managed to buy one and here it is. I have removed the engine to see if I could fit a larger one but it would require too much modification so I will stick with the ASP 25.

Parkzone P51D BNF - Wing attachment mod

Well I did a really silly thing with my P51D - I launched it and couldn't find the stick to steer the plane (oh dear!!). Anyway it hit a fence and sustained a bit of damage. The wing mount got ripped out. So I had to modify and used a nylon bolt which I prefer to metal bolts anyway. I needed to use some ply to support the bolt on the wing side (on the fuselage side I used a metal nut epoxied to the mounting plate).

Parkzone P51D BNF - Removing the cowl

Well it was not obvious to me how to remove the cowl. Well here it is for you with a photo. The cowl is held in place by 4 screws which also hold the engine exhausts on (they are small screws). You will also need to cut the transfers, so use a sharp knife you make a clean cut so the transfers will still look good when you replace the cowl.

Of course you will need to remove the spinner and prop first. The front of the spinner is a press fit. Once you have removed this undo the nut holding the prop on and this will allow the rest of the spinner to be removed.

Google Searches - we know better than you.

I have just picked up a half built control line stunter and thought I would see what Google had to say about it, so I typed in ‘Playboy stunter’ as my search term (that’s what its called). I suppose I was asking for trouble with the term ‘Playboy’. Anyway Google in its infinite wisdom decided I really wanted to search for ‘Playboy stunner’ and gave me the results for that. Wrong. Just because 1 million punters searched for Playboy stunner doesn’t mean I want to ;o)

Glider flyaway

You are enjoying flying your favourite model and then you realise that it is not responding as it should. You watch it free flight until it hits the ground. Well thats what happened to me last night. It was at about 250 ft and in a right turn and it continued to tighten in the turn until it got into a mild spiral. It hit some bush and fell into the bush on a hill.

Well I didn't hold much hope and the bush is quite thick. There is a road which goes through it and it drove up it until I came around a corner and there it was. I was rapt. The only damage is a broken fin. I suspect the cause is a Turnigy ESC failure. I will replace it. The current ESC still works but runs very hot so that is my theory.

Parkzone P51D BNF

Well I took delivery of a Parkzone P51D BNF (bind n fly), installed my radio gear and took 5 flights to break it. Well it is fixable but I think I will get a new wing as the current one has extra diheral. I launched and then couldn't find the roll stick... doh. Hit the fence and a car. So it doesn't look quite like this any more. However it will again.

And yes, the photo is not very good quality. I took it from my phone.

PCLinuxOS

This post is coming to you (if anyone reads it), from my Toshiba laptop running PCLinuxOS 2010 running Enlightenment. Its running from a USB stick so I can still run Windows 7. The only issue I have is the sound is not loud enough and full volume everything doesn't fix it. It recognised my default screen resolution, my wireless card and everything is going well (the fonts can be a let down). It appears to put less load on the laptop as the fan hardly comes on whereas with Windows 7 it comes on all the time!