donnyman

Not Getting hit by the prop was learned early by me (but I still got hit) I got chicken sticks and starters but every now and the I forget these nylon props of today are sharper than knives, the edge molding flash will cut to the bone even off the engine. I tend to sand and rebalance all my nylon props but they will still slice you like bacon.

I still have my regular 8mm movies from the 50,s and sixties been meaning to transfer to a dvd but ....... you guys have me digging out all my old gonna do,s but the memories are worth it

rt3232

My Feedback: (6)

what's gonna do list ?, I have troble just trying to keep up with the to/do list I get 2 off of the top and the wife add's three on the bottom.


cheers Bob T

I-fly-any-and-all

My Feedback: (1)

donny im going to hold you to it! get those old movies out!!!

Greybeard1

I'll pass on the movies, Donny. Don't even like my own.

OKC, winter is when I build, modify and destroy (usually) so I'm ready in spring. But, my credit card can stand only so much before I start to squeal. Hit that last month, on my way there for this month and I'm sitting on a balsa order, without which all I can do is twiddle the thumbs. Yesterday, my inner child went to the hobbyshop and bought the last three K&B marine engines he had, today my credit card took the hit for the parts to convert them to aero engines. Trying to scrounge enough wood to build a wing for a sorta trainer, if you like your trainer with hair. Been a long time since I've had to wait on wood.

Rich. (Sitting inside in comfort, taking parts I won't need off engines.)

ARUP

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donnyman

I intend to try. but don't forget the honey do's. gonna slow me down.

Charlie P.

I'd say "yes" as well . . . until I got up to 34cc and 43cc size gas engines and my starter wouldn't turn them. For them I use a padded leather glove.

Though I just put this 18v cordless job together last year and it does the 34cc OK!

HoundDog

My Feedback: (49)

This is one of the better Forums on RCU. W all have mostly Fond memories of our child hood / younger years.
Can U see guys 50 years ago telling stories of how they shot'em up op on the computer where they went bug eyed
watching a computer monster for their formative years and beyond ... Unless they are still doing Real Flight ver 89.4
That's the Mars lander simulation still popular from 30 years earlier.

sales018feetechrc

wow...a lot of child hood memories came out

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

I can relate Rich! I have a weakness for older used engines I can rework myself. I only use the discretionary cash I build up over time so I can make a purchase, it means I do a lot of waiting too!

Charlie I love that 18 volt cordless started, if that doesn't start hook a prop to it and fly it!

My wife had old silent 8mm movies going back to her father's bachelor party and the wedding. When we were first married I bought an 8mm sound camera and projector on close out. Years ago when her father was still living (her mom is 91) we setup the projector and using an 8mm camcorder transferred everything with her, her sister, parents, me and our kids making comments and creating a commentary. I have since transferred them to DVD and continue to transfer all video records directly from the digital camera to DVD..

Greybeard1

Given my choice, I've always bought used if it was available. But, the LHS sitting on six NIB K&B marine engines and not being able to sell them, we struck a deal. I have no idea what the market price for a 4011 is, just the price from K&B, which I know is higher than they ever sold for in the stores. A little less than $300 for the engines, and about another $120 or so for the parts to convert them, I'm probably still a long way ahead. One was froze up, a squirt of WD and a little careful working with it freed that up. Parts will probably be here Monday or Tuesday, then I can start to make engines out of them. I've got a couple of older Fox that have needs, for which Fox makes nothing anymore, but they're some thirty years old. The .36 has maybe two hours running on it, the .29, less than one, the .25 never been run. Going to have to try the antifreeze "slow boil" on the .36, it's pretty dark, looks nasty but it's got good compression and otherwise is in good condition. Future project though. I need the K&B's more at this time. If I accomplish everything I want to this winter, it's going to be an expensive winter.

Rich.

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

Rich, my LHS did have an assortment of obsolete Fox parts if you give me a list I will check to see if he has anything you can use and the price.

Mike

Greybeard1

(Wide grin) I need the same things everyone else that has those engines does. That long, spindly high speed needle. Those were a big mistake, I don't think they ever corrected that either. I have one that isn't broken, but it's bent, I might be able to go down to the basement and turn out enough to get the engines running. If I do, they'll be a lot shorter and a little more "good for stout, not good for show."

Rich.

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

I made a call Rich he tells me he has two long ones about 1.25" to 1.5" with the double wheel. Tip to first wheel (the part with the tapper) is about .75" long. He also has 2 short high speed needles and the hollow low speed need for the older Fox engines. Let me know if you need a picture and I'll take a camera down.

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

I made a call Rich he tells me he has two long ones about 1.25" to 1.5" with the double wheel. Tip to first wheel (the part with the tapper) is about .75" long. He also has 2 short high speed needles and the hollow low speed need for the older Fox engines. Let me know if you need a picture and I'll take a camera down.

Greybeard1

Hope he has them for a while. After I go pay my property taxes today, my checking is going to be almost zeroed out. If you want to pick them up and hold on to them for a month or two, I'll have enough to start playing and paying again. Thanks either way.

Rich.

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

Do you think they are the correct ones?

Greybeard1

Without knowing the thread diameter, no way to tell. The .29 and .36 use the same, the .25 and .15 use a smaller diameter, but I have all four. If not in one, then they'd be used in the other.

Just measured, from the knurled part to the tip of the needle on the larger is .730". The smaller is about .660" those would sound like they were the larger, and that's the one I'd have the most need for.

Rich.

flycatch

My Feedback: (26)

Most if not all you posters are reflecting the worst time of our hobby. Engines that hardly ran, electronics that were unreliable and don't forget those kits which were mostly garbage. If it were not for the Japanese we would have never progressed to the point we are today. I only say this because I have been there and done that. Now we are in the age of gas engines and electric motors and again you most thank Asians.

Flypaper 2

Here, when I was winding my own motors, making my own controllers and planes made from doorskins and insulation foam, such things made me feel like I had the world by the *****. It's called a hobby. If it managed to fly, that was just an extra.

Gord.

ARUP

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koastrc

Flycatch I can only agree with part of your theory. In the sixties I spent time in Asia and I can tell you no one would dare use a Japanese radio. As far as engines two American Airman help design a famous engine for a Japanese manufacturer. I do admit the Asians learned and improved much in the hobby.
By the way the two Airman, Lou Penrod and Larry Posey.

koastrc

Flycatch I can only agree with part of your theory. In the sixties I spent time in Asia and I can tell you no one would dare use a Japanese radio. As far as engines, two American Airman help design a famous engine for a Japanese manufacturer. I do admit the Asians learned and improved much in the hobby.
By the way the two Airman, Lou Penrod and Larry Posey.

Greybeard1

And in the sixties, it was not unusual to see japanese engineers going through American factories, cameras, clipboards, sketching and writing as they went. Then someone got the thought, tell them what they want to know, watch your own job disappear to japan. Then "on the floor" in process inspectors disappeared, the result, the cars of the sixties and seventies, and just about everything else made here. My own job disappeared for three years, cheaper for that long, then "So solly, must increase price." Mistake, we still had the machines to make the product. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough seniority to get my old job back, stuck in a lower paying job. When I got to the position that ordering gages was part of my job, Mitutoyo suddenly began to disappear, and I could justify the reason to buy mostly Starrett. Brown and Sharpe was a little harder, but I managed to show the added cost for B&S was justified too. Getting past the bean counters wasn't easy.

Rich.

Telemaster Sales UK

I've just realised that being 66 and having built my first model when I was twelve, gets me over the 50 years bar on both counts. I don't feel old but I cannot run as fast as I once could and some of the boys I went to school with are now dead!

I've got two stories from the old days which I wrote for a magazine. The first one will explain why I am here typing this, the second one will hopefully amuse you.

In 1960 was about 12 years old and this is when I built my first model aeroplane. My father had never built a model aircraft but two of my uncles had, and so it came to pass that I was assisted in this process by my Uncle Geoff, an architectural draughtsman, who built beautiful free flight models and who had married my mother’s sister; gliders were his particular passion. The first model was the Keil Kraft “Ajax”, a 30” span rubber powered model, itself an enlargement of the more popular “Achilles.” This was followed by a small Keil Kraft glider. Neither was well-built and neither flew very well. Neither did I get a positive reaction from Uncle Geoff who criticised my inadequate workmanship and urged me to take more time over my next model!

Had I given up at this stage I would not have been writing this now, but I bought a Mills .75cc diesel engine with the proceeds of my paper round and a Veron “Cardinal” to suit it. This was a 36” high wing monoplane with a sheet fuselage. Stung by Geoff’s earlier criticism, I took my time over its construction, double-glueing all of the joints with balsa cement, and it came out looking pretty good even if I say so myself.

Now for the covering; the flying surfaces were not a problem, I had decided to finish them in yellow lightweight tissue. However, I’ve always been one who wanted to stand out from the crowd, (years later several people told me, too late, that I should have been an actor,) and I wanted to finish the fuselage in purple but in those days you could not buy purple dope but you could buy red dope and you could buy blue dope; I bought a tin of each. Had I finished the model in either of those colours the model would have looked good in a conventional colour scheme but I mixed the two together and they came out brown! The wing and tailplane were covered in yellow tissue, given two coats of dope and a coat of fuel proofer and looked really smart. Then there was nothing for it but to take my brown and yellow Cardinal round to Geoff to show him.

To do this I had to go to his parents’ house. It was the summer of 1960, Geoff had contracted cancer and he and his wife had moved in with his mother and father so that all three of them could look after him. He was to die of this disease the following winter, just a few months after his baby son was born; he was only 31. He was very positive about my improved workmanship but questioned the use of heavy coloured dope on the fuselage until I explained that it had a sheeted fuselage. He didn’t mention the colour!

So after showing him the model, I went with my father and his brother, my Uncle Ivor, who had also built model aircraft, to Forton Aerodrome to fly the model. Geoff wasn’t fit enough to join us. Forton was a WW2 training aerodrome. It was here that the great fighter ace Jean-Pierre Closterman first flew a Spitfire. In 1960 most of the main runway hadn’t disappeared beneath the plough and we flew the model from the intersection of the two runways. It was a beautiful windless summer’s day and having trimmed the model over the proverbial long grass I put some fuel into the thimble-like fuel tank and launched it. The model climbed to height, as the fuel ran out the engine revs would rise and the model would climb more steeply. When the engine cut, the model would stall, regain flying speed and glide back to earth in wide circles. As there was no wind, we found that we could fill the fuel tank which gave an engine run of over two minutes by which time the model was a tiny cross in the sky, then there would be a repeat performance, the revs would rise, the model would stall, regain flying speed and return to land just a few metres away. I can still see the sun shining through those yellow wings. I didn’t know it then but I was addicted.

In the next three years a succession of free-flight and control line models followed but none had the same impression as the Cardinal. Then in 1963 I took my first girl to the pictures and for the next 25 years, aeromodelling gave way to sex and drugs and rock’n’roll and I’ll plead guilty to all three. In fact was still leading rock bands until 2008 before I realised that I no longer had the power and range that is required to perform this role. Besides there’s something rather ridiculous about a sixty year old man singing about making love “All Niiiight Looooooooooong!!!” I still have all the equipment and sometimes dream of forming one last band but the thought of organising everything puts me off. Maybe if somebody else…ah well, never mind.

Then in 1988 I was living in North Devon and saw a man flying a radio controlled model in a field. I stopped the car, walked over to him made some enquiries. I bought a kit, a St Leonard’s Models “Galaxy” at an auction where I was buying furniture, bought an unused radio off a carpenter who was setting up “on his own,” and was given an Irvine 21 car engine by a kid who’d wrecked it. I got it to go and the rest as they say is history. The Galaxy was not a success owing to my own lack of physical co-ordination. I put the engine and radio into a vintage Junior 60 which I covered in olive drab parachute silk which suited me much better. I swapped the Galaxy for a damaged Telemaster, the 66” version with the plywood fuselage and that led on to other things!

Sometimes I think about making another Galaxy to see whether, years later I will be able to fly it!