The bench did see tons of hobby related stuff in all this time, unfortunately I never really recovered from the transmitter failure series that almost destroyed the entire fleet until I found the problem, so the shaking is still there when I only think about flying.
As said before I have more hobbies than sparetime and the bench is still in use for many different reasons, one of them can be seen in activity on the link below, still working on it but the results from prototype III are not too bad, judge by yourself

windsurfing action video shot from very unusual camera angles (1 min 12 sec)

Smooth landings !

rawy

Things rarely come as expected, so when I wrote my last entry here I would'nt imagine job, family, house garden, our vintage parking lot and so much more would allow me back at my bench to see some progress before the very end of this year, not much hope even for flying ..... or maybe the sim ...
Getting back at the bench here means to focus back at every project laying around trying to remember at what point I stalled and took something else.
Had the opportunity to go through these reflections while recovering in the first few weeks after my leg surgery, week after week in paralel to my mobility came back the hobby and the motivation to atleast change the look of some of the unfinished dusty stuff around here, the lack of free memory in my radio was partly the reason for some project delays, had the mode conversion of my second Eclipse 7 done early this year to discover the 7 new models where'nt enough, now my third Eclipse TX is on the way, can't wait latest version with telemetry and 16 model memories, made a list yesterday does'nt have to buy or start anything new to have it complete - hobby ? addiction ?
Alternating on five projects trying to share space methods & tools for similar steps got me from the Monster Puddle that sat on the bench the week before my accident to more depron : F 14, Hawker Typhoon, Beaver, FW 190D9
the Steve Shumate F 14 saw a substantial jump ahead in the last weeks, still needs some sanding and panel lining before paint, have to ready...Continue Reading

What can I write other than there has been very scarce rc related activity here this past year, the return to work in february after my back injury was hard, could'nt hold my back sitting after a journey running around at work. The final recovery of my back (delta) muscles occured in autumn during our 3500 miles trip trough the south of USA exactly one year after the incident.

Started the flying in july with the maiden crash of a vintage glider, in fact it flew much better than expected, on the attempt to land in order to modify the elevator throws it stalled, the ABS fuselage damaged beyond repairs - what a motivating start that was.
Later in summer the rebuild of my first planbuilt slowflyer from 2001 went well, loads of hangar rash for this airframe that never flew, another failure in concerns of flight, had to admit this super lightweight is an indoor flyer only, even the slightest thermic current or gust would make it totally uncontrollable, managed to save the hangar queen.
With the longer nights coming end of november the bench saw a little more activity, did the final steps on the Mini Funtana rebuild with the covering and these last days the eflite Edge 540 was rebuilt to the stage of covering, another plane saved from the trash bin.
If everything comes as planned with the ongoing works in our home, I should finally be able to concretise my dream of making a new closed hobby-room/workshop where I will be able to build, mainly sand and paint in a well...Continue Reading

This past year will be remembered here as the one of the back injuries, after a first incident Aug 1st with broken rib bones I did a mistake at my job oct 6th breaking vertebras 6 & 7.
Spent the first six weeks laying or standing upright, forbidden to sit, no computing, reading limited to "lightweight" magazines or books, only allowed activity was walking, Peanut the siberian husky had to stay home first until I found a way to tie it's leash to my belt.
Unfortunately a misinterpretation by the medical team lead to a new fracture of vertebra 7 the last weekend in November, the new healing method includes a corset which holds/blocks my back, am now condemned to wear this stainless steel T-shirt until the end of february 2011.
All this above explains the lack of activities at my bench, removing the dust was about the best I could do for several weeks and finally I achieved something long due, removed/organized all the mess on my bench to find back a clean and flat surface.
Small steps could be done lately on very lightweight jobs, started repairing a wingtip on a glider, hooking ailerons on another, a beaten up Eflite Mini-Edge from flying buddy found a new home here saving her from trash, she's now slowly regaining volume.
Other small steps done at the sheeting of HJ's Dora, still have to hook the tailfeathers and ailerons, all those jobs so easily done when you're in good shape require long reflections to become compatible with my actual situation.
This is probably the main reason why going the way of the easy jobs like cut out of plans and parts lead to another new build, couldn't resist when I found out it was the same scale as the Dora.

Happy New Year & Safe Landings in 2011

At home due to broken ribs, I was lurking around my workbench looking to "get something done"
As always in this situation, I would be tempted by something new, the actual offer on the market is full of very nice looking goodies, injected foam airframes with plenty of "scale" detail, delivered with all the setup stuff in there, servos motors esc's sometimes even retracts, all this for about half the price of the loose components in the LHS.
Makes guy's like me look really old, still cutting, warming, bending, sanding, painting depron ... and sometimes the result even flies !
Reasonably the next candidate in row should be one of the already started unfinished, now who's reasonable when it comes to the hobby ?
While started writing this I downloaded HJ's FW 190D plan and checking in my computer I realized it was already there unzipped ready to print.
Decided to go on with the printing in order to avoid repeating a future download, once the plan was taped up the decision was made, yep there will be one more in the started but unfinished row.
The Monster Puddle is ready, flew 5 - 6 flights to now but the planned lessons with Tim did'nt start yet, unfortunately the Prism 7 TX does not have the mix programms I use in my Eclipse for differential thrust, when I pass the controls over from the Eclipse to the Prism one motor quits working, could'nt decide to change the setup in order to make the Buddy system work without differential thrust, the ease of...Continue Reading

The bench saw atleast one job or action per day since my last post here, I hate to throw things away but I love to repair about every broken thing that comes to my hands or altleast strip the "wreck" apart to watch for re-usable stuff, infact the info gathered on the web about the early foamies flying on self-winded computer trash motors and cannibalized cellphone batteries brought me to the hobby almost ten years ago.

All this to say that with a family of 4 active people , house, dog, cars, garden tools, bikes, my son's Tim chinese electric quad etc. the bench is my daily stop, or to do something usually "urgent" for a family member when not trying to keep up with all the unfinished, unstarted, unflown, unflyable but time consuming, yep all the colourfull sometimes dusty stuff hanging around here, called the hobby, and where's the progress this spring ?

The impression is also related to the fact my latest project was kept secret and hidden most of the time .... my son Tim's birthday present, the Roland Merk & Meatbomber's 200% Puddle Monster 2 meter/80inch span.
Perfect name for the biggest depron plane I ever built, delivered it 3 weeks ago in advanced ARF stage, had to find a workshop outside of the house to do the main assembly in order to keep it secret, he was really surprized and pleased, even if his actual spleen is to train to be a pro soccer player, was trying to involve him in the finish jobs, he chose an idea for the paintsheme...Continue Reading

The Polaris II maiden on january 3rd in a freezing cold started uneventfull except for one clic of aileron trim, flew few turns over water and headed to the clubground 10 miles away, a few buddies wanted to see her fly, stayed in the clubhouse half an hour with the plane outside trying to get the bugs out of my radio battery and having the first talk of the year with my friends, when we got outside and I decided to fly despite my weak radio, arming the esc ??? Hmmmm no beep ? disconnected shortly the second time the signal was weak ? water in the hull ? wet esc ? Noooooo ! In fact, due to the previous flight out of the lake, the wings showed few drops of water, running down during the drive, the gaps of the ailerons filled and froze.
Two warnings where enough and I decided to bring her home complete, my buddies will see her fly painted.
the masking and painting took forever... Chris (cvoyles) posted his very nice design and I immediately decided it was the way to go, tried to modify a bit the front, in order to get a thinner neck ... actually it got too thin now, hope to post some better inflight pics here soon.
Weight 483 g/1.06lb/ 27 ounces with 2200/3S TP Pack, Grayson 30A esc and 2212/06
It is still very cold these days, so no sanding sessions outside, the F14 crossed the bench a few times but with no significant progress to report, am still battling with the right noseshape, was playing with a Walkera chopper my friend Steve dropped here but setup problems between the heli's mode 2 module and my mode 1 radio soon stopped the activity on the helipad.

A few more aircraft related pics from our US trip in october, Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson AZ was very impressive, another place where I will hopefully return one day

safe landings !

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

safe landings in 2010

rawy

More pics of this great place, as said before we visited very nice Museums in US but this one made me feel like a kid again, my son sitting in all the planes I dreamed about while building Airfix and other plastic kits back in the early seventies, will post some more pics of the Museums visited during our US trip, unfortunately the camera was out of battery when we where at Smithonian Air & Space in Washington DC but there's more to come

Enjoy !

pics US trip 09

Now it's 4 weeks we are back from our 28 day US trip, we drove 7600 miles/12'000 kilometers from New York to New York, it was a great time for our family and even if there's a balance left for payment in the next months we all had a great experience and there's still thousands of "postcards" and other intense memories to recall.
We started our trip sunday October 4th in Washington DC visiting the Capitol, Native American Museum and of course the Smithonian Air and Space, the kids suffered the long walk but saw the White House and Thomas Jefferson Memorial.
Two days later we got to the incredible white beaches of Pensacola and Perdido key, unfortunately my (Google Earth) plans of dropping the family at the nearby beaches to the National Museum of Naval Aviation failed due to the fact it is a Military Base, the positive note is that my son Tim joined me for the visit and next day the complete family was on the bus to see the P5M2 MARLIN - the only one left -
This Museum is a beauty could spend two more days in there easily.
A few days later we stayed in New Orleans at the Place d'Armes Hôtel, enjoying the colourful french quarter life, before heading west again, the Gulf area was very nice and friendly until the announced bad weather turned bad, cold & rainy ... TV even showed some snow up north ... New Mexico and Arizona where the only sunny places allover the continent ... lets go !
Drove in the rain from San Antonio almost to the El Paso but this time...Continue Reading

The perfect weather conditions this year called for lots of outdoor family activities, very nice sailing on our Lake with the two vintage Hobie's, #16 for me/son, the one and only #3,5 in Switzerland for our daughter, we finally did the longtime planned canoeing on the nearby Doubs river in France, with a short paddling excursion into the Rhein-Rhône canal.
And lots of flying ! the Polaris became exactly what I was looking for, a daily flyer could set a new record for me with 4 consecutive days at three full flights, 18 - 20 minutes with two esc cooling breaks, this is one full hour -yep ...ok 56 minutes/day
Sunday on the very last mah's of the TP2200 a slight dive meant to recover some speed for the powerless turn let me hit the single object on the lake in my zone the stick of a water marking, the plane got stuck on the obstacle the positive : electronics are dry and safe.
With so many hours on the log the Polaris will be buried in white... my thoughts in the last days where to paint her and to announce here that she was finally ready, even if I had more adapted my style to the plane than found real solutions to the overheating problems.

Early may a new 6mm Depron sheet got reduced into dozens of strange looking parts, as announced here the Steve Shumate F14 build is on the bench and getting shape slowly, the wooden parts for the wing folding mechanism are cut and sanded, fuselage and pontoons still need a few sanding hours, motivated by the incredible USPS...Continue Reading

5 batteries flown, 2 motors, 2 recoveries, the Polaris maiden Saga finally knew a happy end

Its a really good feeling when a scratched plane behaves like "on rails" finally trimmed that you can release the sticks for a second and watch it flyby !
The first substancial error occured when I ordered a Motor with half of the required KV for the Polaris Airframe, the first maiden went ok but there was no unlimited verticals and the plane flew in a speedrange where almost every change in the flight path needed trim corrections, a first attempt at vertical ended in a loss of power and a dive into the wet which looked like a cormoran fishing dive the plane popped out of the water again but ended laying on it's pylon .... the abandoned recovery windsurf board at the flying spot almost forced me to a bath, the long winter added atleast 10 kilos of water to the foam weakening the hull's boyancy dramatically, very scary ! the missing fin added to the hassle of paddling in the cold water but the Polaris came back with almost no damage and flew again few minutes later.
After checking the effective data with the Watt's Up meter I had to admit my error and look for a better motorization.
Fortunately a club Buddy still had an unused Axi 2208/20 in his workshop, not exaclty 2200 KV but atleast 1750, so after cutting a "Service Door" into the right Pylon side I replaced the weak chinese A20-26M unable to furnish 10A with a 7x6 prop.
The first motor runups this...Continue Reading

Looking back, the winter has gone quickly now and it seems there's not so much progress to report from my bench, believe in the time I needed to get ONE mini Funtana back to shape, the factory must have produced thousands ... and mine is still not ready for maiden (...)
As announced here I needed a break from balsa, the first idea was to continue on one of the projects in progress sitting around but finally I started a new build.
Steve Shumate's Polaris
https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=922465
Came across this thread a few months ago, my first impression was that the plane would not look scalish enough to meet my taste, after watching the video i was truly impressed by the flying performances and especially by the very wide speedrange, this plane is exactly what I need as a daily flyer, the lake is a 3 minute walk from home and the new job doesn't allow as much time for the hobby anymore, so the half hour drive to the club's flying field equals one flight per day after work at home.
Have some doubts about the required setup, What I have here is a HET typhoon 6/3d with 10A esc which is probably at the lower limit for ROW's , the better setup will not get here before about ten days

Had a few flights with the Jumping Jack and the Graupner Monsun in the last weeks, the Monsun got damaged in an incident at the flying field when a gust blew her from the roof of my car (...) the motor mount and rudder attachment suffered but it's repairable and waiting in...Continue Reading

It really helped to have the second new Mini Funtana to recover "original measures" there are in fact slight differences from one to the other, It will require a very precise job to get it solid and accurate, therefore I could not decide yet on the way to finally assemble the different elements in order to get a straight plane again, the only tools I have are a few aluminium profiles and an old flat glass table, was thinking about a meticulous build up, part by part but the Ponal glue I used to now is bonding too fast to allow corrections, in fact I must admit a certain part of masochism but to solve these difficulties is exactly what I like most in the bench part of the hobby.

Had a few reflections about the big depron Marlin I still have in project, funny enough Meatbomber recovered the thread from the deep RC-Groups abyss at the same time, the flying boat will probably be the next candidate on the bench : back to depron but there's still a few hours to go with balsa on the yellow rebirth.

Steve's Beaver pic shows the trim problem I have on this build, it is very light but does not want to fly slow, stalls as soon as I reduce throttle, will try to increase the wing angle, tried to adapt CoG with no success, started this build more than one year ago, the structure was built to allow a conversion to floats and back to wheels in a few steps at the field/lake, flew a few batteries but the poor flying performances did not really motivate to go ahead.


The Monsun flew well with the new wheelcovers and most of my buddies at the clubground could'nt believe the perfect motor sound, since I got the two ventilation intakes cutout in the bonnet the propsound helped to make the Axi loud ... very realistic plane sound and very loud ?
Can't believe a soundmodule would do better !
Did a few cosmetic corrections since the last pic posted down here, will update the pic as soon as possible hopefully by an inflight shot of my buddy Steve "the artist"

The last days brought alot of nice and funny outdoor activities with the family, in the first hours of Sylvester day, snowfall set on and left 30cm/~1 foot out here, since we where on the snowboard everyday, had some night sled sessions, long walks with the dog and today I hiked on top of the Chasseral 1609m/1Mile above sea level with my splitboard on skins and Peanut our untrained siberian husky, the first third of the trip up was a kind of "parkhiking" : pipi here, smell there, it's always a satisfying feeling worth the effort when you reach the altitude where you pop out of the fog, the intensity of the sun, it's in some way a feeling related to flying above this sea of mist, yes ! atleast my heart frequence was flying,

The first steps of the eflite Mini Funtana rebuild showed there was more parts to save than initially expected, the new firewall is roughly done and most of the parts are revised and ready to be : or reinforced locally or sanded clean and prepared for final reassembly, still have to cutout the balsa fuse-sidewalls.
Remember the feeling right after the crash, coulnd't imagine of rebuilding it once more, not after such a hard impact ! According to my normal attitude in such cases I recovered every smallest part and this helps alot now.

Below a pic of another of my scratched foamies, the C3605 an entirely swiss built warbird resulting of the turbine modification of the C3603 powered by a Hispano 12 cylinder engine.
Built this after a PSS plan by Frantz Lallemand joined to the french Fly magazine, span 1,35m/53" powered by a Typhoon outrunner, the AUW of circa 360g/12,7oz made it a nice floater, the ideal everyday flier even in windy conditions. Certainly the foamie with the longest flightlog in my hangar, destroyed it into a three once I was trying to fly in a too small spot between threes and aerial power lines. Kept the almost intact wing in order to rebuild it once.
Here a link to a short Depron Beaver video the old RCgroups Gallery

https://www.rcgroups.com/gallery/sho...at=506&page=11

JJ left the bench yesterday immediately replaced by another candidate : The eflite Mini Funtana, no time to clean up the place, started stripping carefully the cover material in order to re-use parts of it and define which parts will be kept for the reconstruction. I tend to keep as much as possible from the original parts, as long as they are rebuildable, unfortunaltely the hard impact due to a weak homemade elevator horn did add to the job of a previously repaired major crash, the complete firewall and battery compartment elements need to be replaced by new solid ply ones, have the material here, only coud'nt decide yet how I was going to make them, jigsaw or make a small Dremel based device to machine them.
As said before I still have a brand new Mini Funtana in the box upstairs, will help to recover accurate measures.
When the plane went down almost 18 months ago, shortly after an extensive fuselage repair, the plan was to keep this one for parts, bought a new because I could hardly imagine being without this plane.
Now having matured my errors and spent all this time wthout the yellow fellow I realized that all the "spareparts" I really needed in the former flying experience where already broken, the rest of no use but still too good to end into trash.
The other projects in the row are waiting for inspiration ... changed the desktop picture on the PC for one showing the subject of my headscratching sessions : the Continental engine dummy for the L4 Cub, need two in different scales, one for my Guillows mod, the other for the 1/6 conversion.
Missed a perfect flying day yesterday due to family issues, the maiden of the Jumping Jack Mark II will probably not happen anymore before new year.

Happy New Year !

Had a lot of repairs on the bench this last month, except for the M24 Kyosho Caliber *the almost daily hover in the living room teaching tool* few model related.
Was astonished to find a video on youtube showing how to solve my 9 year old boy's main problem, replace the screen of his PSP, took a few days to get one here and it was done, this and many other issues did'nt help to do a lot on my current RC builds or repairs.
The Jumping Jack is still in the stage of final adjustments before the wings and fuselage get covered, should happen these days.

Got a Turnigy C3548-800motor with the HXT80 esc for the 1/6 Cub, would like to fly her with a 6000 3s I have laying around and a big Prop of course, all my former models have Axi's, Hacker's, Mega's or Het's ? this one will have to accept the standard adapted to my actual budget which is close to none ... started to cutout the windows to the L4 configuration, the cowl from the SIG 1/6 seems to adapt perfectly, will have to do a few measures before I join the two halves, next project is what got me stuck on the Guillow's the Continental engine dummy, have loads of pics for detail but could'nt decide for the final technique to go, now I can draw it in the bigger scale, prototype it in the guillows size and build it 1/6

The Mini Funtana is getting dusty downstairs now, no chance to get space for her on the bench, the Beaver got some attention : a bad landing damage repaired today, will try to improve the slow flying qualities by increasing the wing angle as experienced with the Marlin, test flight report to come.

This cold and stormy weekend brought some motivation for the bench, the Jumping Jack could finally recover the original fuselage measures now there's still wings to repair, testfit, covering job on both fuse and wing, final assembly and ....? a new elevator servo !!!
did'nt notice until tonight but the elevator servo is dead, which could be an explanation for the crash !!
it's a HS-55, the smaller of the visible pinions on top is missing some theet, the elevator is almost moving free
Found another of my elevator problems ... laying around and am playing with the idea of repairing it ... again.
The tiny control horn I made from thin ply in order to replace the too soft originals was probably damaged during transport and broke in flight, the remains show the results, will have to stay with balsa longer than planned
The Cub was partly stripped and the tail is repaired, was more damage than I expected but I believe its rock solid now and the further mods like a pull-pull rudder will require some more job in this section.
Can't really decide on which motor/esc I should go for 3s, have a 6000 3s Thunder Power laying around here, this size planes make it more expensive really bad for my budget these days.

The last 18 months where very bumpy on the professional and hobby sides of life, the passage of the half century this past summer was'nt as happy as I would have imagined and nobody was really in mood for parties.
Atleast I found a new job seven months ago and the professional situation is getting back to normal now.
Three weeks ago the crash of my favourite plane, a bulletproof flyer, the Fliton Jumping Jack helped to sort out a tragic serie of crashes due to a defective battery connector in my TX
The bench was very busy with repairs as almost every flying session brought some new job and I could hardly find some time to think about new or even the older long term projects laying around.
One of my favourite hobbies is bringing older things back to life, in the past before I came to RC I was restoring Cars, Lancias, Fiats, Abarths and others, maybe this is the reason why I prefer to bring back to life an old dusty RC-Plane than to build a new kit or finish an ARF, so beside the building of Depron Scratch or plan builds I was always looking for some interesting "wrecks".
One of those was an old Graupner Monsun #6241, I got for free from a younger guy who considered it as unflyable, took me almost two years sourcing the spare parts and restoring it to "new", I maidened her one year ago but finished the job in the last weeks, except for the "cracking" original cover Film material she is now one of my nicest looking planes and a very nice...Continue Reading