Peter_OZ

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No progress to report, did nothing on the 47 over the weekend

Got out for a fly on Sunday for Warbirds at Gratton Field. Hardly anyone turned up. Good day of yakking, flying and watching the Bathurst motor races on the telly. You septics can google it.

6 flights on the Corsair and one on the P51. Wind was being peculiar, and gusting crosswind so decided to leave the P51 on the ground after the first flight. As soon as I packed up though it calmed to zero wind of course . . .

Yes I will be back on the 47 this week.

Put another 3 kg on and I'm feeling very bleahhh

rt3232

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Hi Pete
Good you had fun.
Well when I was lad I watched most all motor races, but when I sold my hot rod and went to full size birds I never looked back, and now I watch only when my son shows up.

Was out flying with the 300 doing some areos flat spin and came out a bit close to mother earth, miner damage, and sense the weather has not corporated with my days off, so cleaned up the shop a bit hehe

cheers bob T

Peter_OZ

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mate you need crash airbags on your birds hehehe

will call you Bob T crash goat!!

rt3232

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works for me

Peter_OZ

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misy be time for you guysto hibernate soon.

Been watching that show ice road truckers, man that is a road I would not want to be driving 40 odd tons on!

Interesting to watch though. There is one based on Oz truckies too. Bunch of boof heads mostly.

rt3232

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Yeap most likely about 5 weeks left if I can get out depending on the weather and my days off.

But the good thing it has not been down to freezing yet.

So your spring is on the way, so do you plan on having the 47 ready to fly for your season ?? or next it been a long build.

Cheers Bob T

chorner

Anyone know of any good aluminum-hub "scale" tailwheels that would work well with this plane?

Peter_OZ

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well careful mate or that ape ohbummer, gore and the cow billary will want to put a carbon tax on you for enjoying warm weather FFS


mate our season is 365 days a year! We are subtropic here remember. Winter for us is about 18C during the day.

47 should be ready by Christmas. Weathering is slowing me down at present. Once that is done a clear coat and fit all the bits into it.

Weigh and balance, engine runs etc.

Peter_OZ

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You can have a look what Sierra has or try meister etc

BOLTMAN

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Hi Pete,
Had a good time at Luskintyre last week, lots of flying lots of catching up with old friends. See attached pic of "Jungle Queen" for some Thunderbolt inspiration.

Mick

Peter_OZ

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hey Mick,
yes Ron said it was a good turnout and was impressed by the attitude of the scale fraternity compared to events up here. Have to agree with him as most of the SCARF (intentional R inserted) events are 99% piddly little ARF rubbish.

I would not mind seeing a scale / warbird event to get other modellers out as just warbirds genre is getting stale.

Gratton field is getting very poor numbers.

No flying for me as just wasnt in the mood. Did a little weatering on the 47 and have started on the fuz.

me

rt3232

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Pictures man Pictures

How about a little detail on how it's done, the bit I ave tried has not been good.

Cheers Bob T

Peter_OZ

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mae i am learning as I go, just using cheap posted paints, the ones you would let a kid use. Dab a bit of water on the paint tray, mix a couple of colours and apply down a panel or rivet line with a small brush, paint tneeeds to be super watery. Let it dry then with a slightly dampy cloth daband wipte away to create the effect you want.

It is all trial and error. Dave aka ticketec is the jedi master on the technique.

In hindsight I should have sprayed it gloss clear but was worried aboyut weight so decided not to so as to save a few coats and a couple of pounds of weight.

It will be semi matt clear coated last.

Did a little bit more last night on the fuz. Try a bit like it ok, don't like it rub off with a damp cloth and start again.

Beautiful day here today, sunny and will be HOT. Great day for the beach and I am sitting here on the 11th floor staring out the window like a bloody lemming. Bahhhh Bleassed to have a good job so should not winge.

Starting to get excited about being able to get back to cub repair and new wing for seafury. With the 47 that would give me 3 more models to fly. I'm down to 5 at the moment.

cheers
P

Peter_OZ

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Mick that is a bloody good photo of your Z jug, almost seems to be idling along which is not like you at all hehehe

rt3232

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I mate thanks for the info as I am in the process of redoing the Corsair I might give it a try

Peter_OZ

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do it very lightly with very thin application.

BOLTMAN

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I agree Pete, SCAF has become a grey nomads camping club that also happen to fly plastic 46 size ARFs that vaguely resemble a warbird. It no longer represents the reason it was conceived, ie to promote building as well as flying models of warbirds.

The recent event at Tin Can Bay was definitely a step in the right direction. Minimum span 80" eliminated the plastic / foam stuff and opening it up to any scale ( not just warbirds ) brought a few interesting civillian scale models out of the woodwork. They only got 20 pilots & about 40 models but there was only pretty short notice of the event. I really hope it gets more support next year & grows into a big event.

Mick

Peter_OZ

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I think that is the way to go to be honest. As for Gratton you rock up there with a warbird, in my case my P51 which is not huge at 82" but hardly small and definitely not an ARF only to be tharted by idiots with 3D and pylon models.

I have said to Darryl if they are going to have a warbirds day then enforce just that! Warbirds only. I suggested to him to turn those events into scale/warbird and ban any other genre till after say 3pm. By then we will be gone could care less.

TMAC is getting the same, morons with big 3D and electric rubbish with no flight disciple, think they can just all over the sky. I hav ripped into a few of them already and given them a serve over it.

Lost one model, the original Corsair to some brat who though he could hover in line with the active runway. F wit!!!

If you can't or unwilling to fly in circuit then do not fly, go play on your PC with a sim.

would have liked to go to tincan bay for that event but ws a bit short on cash.

How are the new digs working out and the build of the new house and most importantly new shed?



cheers

P

Peter_OZ

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New spectrum 12 ch DSMX Rx is on its way ....

rt3232

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I still don't under stand why all of the satellite revivers, guess that why I still use Futaba 2.4 hehe

Cheers bob T

chorner

The satellite receiver idea is actually a good idea. At least when done right, and not as requirement to obtain a solid signal. I wouldn't touch Spektrum crap with a 10 foot pole after owning a DX9, DX18 and all associated receivers and accessories; just my opinion of course haha. It's slightly better than your run-of-the-mill Chinese knockoffs, with the exception of very intuitive basic programming capabilities.

Futaba stuff is far more robust than Spektrum, so no need for a bunch of satellites JR DMSS is as well. In the case of JR's latest gear however, satellite receivers are optional - but they are actually a nice option to have, as sometimes it's easier to have a receiver centrally placed for plugging wires into, but not necessarily the best place for routing your receiver antennas. The satellite allows you to move them out of the way, while at the same time providing some redundancy. The same goes for Spectrum, but their equipment has such shoddy performance you're pretty much dead in the water without a bunch of satellites for reception anyhow Their system depends on it, and if one of the satellites kicks out - the whole system can go down.

Anyhow, back to the thread topic. I ended up finding some decent aluminum hub tailwheels. Aeroworks uses some nice ones on their 50CC Sport Cub

Peter_OZ

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called redundant links, space diversity is the correct term for it. old 29/36Mhz was long wavelength RF technology and only needed the single long antenna.

Current 2.4Ghz is short wavelegth and depending on the data coding stream in use will dictate how many Rxrs, etc are needed. Futaba seem to have the one module with 2 longish antenna leads so would assume there are two rxs embedded in one module?? Those leads should of course be fixed at 90 degrees opped to each other for antenna diversity.

JR / Sprectruk apprach is lots of little Rxrs that can be placed in 90 degree opposing postions to each other. Space and antenna and Rx diversity. system will operate even if only one Rx has signal, if practive it will measure for strongest signal and latch onto that.

What is better? I have no expereince with Futaba systems but based on what I have read and heard their system is extremely fast to latch onto a signal and bind, spektrum and JR DSM/DSMX can be a bit slow, over a second. DSMX which I use is a lot faster then the older DSM2 system.

In the US you are swamped with 2.4 Ghz systems non RC that compete with the available 2.4 channels. The Futaba spreadspectrum is a true frequency / channel hopping system. Continually jumps from one to the other same was as military secure comms work.

I'm not sure what the new JR / Spektrum system is, will need to have a read.

anyway it is very interesting technology and a quantam leap from the basic little 4 ch AM or FM sets we used not that long ago. Atually it was not true FM.

blah blah

Peter_OZ

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Interegingly one of the chaps at the field recently got rid of all his Sprectrum systems and bought a top of range Futaba set, not sure of model. He was using boith Spektrum TX and RX.

Now I have seen quite a few chaps lose aircraft while flying with all Spektrum systems. Was it the radio link/system or just dumb thumbs, other aspects coming into play? We all blame the radio instead of of our own fat thumbs.

I fly with a JR 12X converted to DSMX and fly with a mix of JR DSM2 and Spektrum DSMX Rxs. It seems to work ok. Only time I have suspected radio was when I lost the Seafury 2 1/2 years ago coming in on finals. Did some really weird things, dropping wing 45 degrees one way, level it then it dropped 45 the other way. Now it was also gusty with winds almost swiling in a cicular pattern right where I was coming through. My personal belief is that it was wind shear and not a radio issue.


I know at my home field we have trees on Southern approach and to the West of the active. Coming in over the trees on a windy day can be a nightmare os the wind tumbles over them and makes landing really tricky. same if you are over the trees to the West, even if you are some hight above you can still run into a lot of turbulance.

So while it is easy to blame the radio link itself one should look at all the factors. In case of a radio with multiple Rxs the placement of those Rxs and the alignment of the antennas is critical to suucessful and operation.

Remember your basic physics with the polaisation of magnetic fields and our left and right hand rules - bet that brings back a memory of two. Electromagnetic waves are polarised with the electrical and magnetic fields 90 degrees apart.

Hernce why the placement and alignment of the Rx antennas is critical.

Peter_OZ

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one thing I do wonder about these days is the number of WiFi setups that could be in proximity to our fields. Many people look to install WiFi extenders. Now if somebody did put an extender in and happened to use say directional high gain antennas or high gain omnidirectional it is possible to swamp the front end Rf section of our 2.4Ghz recivers irresective of the brand or frequency hopping system in use.

We are talking about saturating the receiver Rf section in this case. When I was in the RAAF as an electronics tech we used to play with such things all the time, testing for signals then jamming them. Quite easy to do.

I wonder how many fields have a gadget to test for competing 2.4Ghz systems? Problem is though that you can test on the ground and have no issues but once in the air you can enter the range of the opposing EM signal and get shut down, you see your model "glitch" into fail safe and think hell that was not me, by the time you register a problem the model has moved out of the range of the jamming signal and latched back into normal operation.

We have industrial buildings to the Northwest of our field and I would be willing to summise several of them will have WiFi networks and quite possibly powerful WiFi Extenders so that all their warehousing gadgets can scan and communicate back to the central server.

We have seen quite a few models glitch and even go down over in that area. If you have a radio system that is slow to re-bind such as the cheaper Spektrum sets then a second or two is all that is needed for a model to get into a flight regieme that you can not get out of, in fact the model may well be recoverable but in our panic we compund the problem and crash.

All the manufactuers will advise their system is foolproof and has the best frequency hopping / encryption system going. Go to a rock concert and stand in front near a speaker tower and try to talk to somebody. You can't as you are being swamped with the sheer power of the audio being blasted at you. You both speak English hence the encryption code is not the issue.

Get the picture?

anyway this is all conjecture and unless you are prepared to have expensive RF studies completed is very hard to prove. Again the main difficulty is that you need to be measuring all along the likely flight parth at a range of altitudes. Could be a good job for a drone with suitable systems on board to measure and store for analysis by a ground system.


Would be very interesting.

Peter_OZ

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now dont get me started on the differences, pros and cons of DSSS (JR / Spektrum DSM), FHSS (Futaba).

Both can have advantages and both can have disadvantages. DSSS locks up 2 channels and does not select a wide spacing so can select 2 adjavent channels and hence you are at risk in this case.
A pro though is that if the whole band is noisey with loads of 2.4Ghaz devices, models, garage doors, WiFi, Bluetooth from mobile phones etc etc then the FHSS system is hopping through a whole bunch of very noisy channels and data will be corrupted or lost while not necessarily losing the entire link.

The DSSS systems in the above scenario would seek clean signal and hence look for channels with no interferrence and lock up 2 of those. So the FHSS is in this case unreliable and "glitchy" while the DSSS appears rock solid.

In practive it is very unlikely you will be in an enviroment that has the whole 2.4Ghz band saturated with "noise" from other systems.

What we are seeing increasingly is that DSSS locks up 2 channels that are adjacent to channels that become noisey and does not have the "discrimination" or agility to then quickly lock up a new channel. It will go into fail safe for a few seconds while it searches for clean channels and but the time it locks those up with a "bind" the model is lost.

note that the DSSS systems will "spread accross" the frequency and other users can in fact be on the same channels that you are lcoked onto. Why does it still work? CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) is why, different codes in use by each system allows both to use same channel. But!!! If there are a lot of systems all trying to use those locked up channels degradation will occur and loss of lock. Pffffttttt

the newer DSSS used by DSMX technology uses a bit of both worlds. Which is why DSMX was designed. DSMX essentially uses the same encoding scheme as DSM2, but the frequency changes thousands of times per second according to a pseudo-random sequence negotiated between the transmitter and receiver. Even if some channels used become completely saturated and unusable, it would normally only result in cut-outs a couple of milliseconds, which would be too short to even notice (in theory). also explains why DSMX systems are backwards comptible with DSM2.

Spektrum Tx / Rx combos seems to be very slow to re-bind, can be several seconds. JR not so slow. My JR 12X with DSMX and using a DSMX RX is very quick, TX off, wait a bit then back on re-binds in well under a second. If it is a DSM2 Rx it can be around 2 or more seconds.

I like both the DSMX and FSTT systems. I very much like that I can still use my older DSM2 RXs as well know upgrading to the lastest system is bloody expensive and if you have loads of models that is a costly excercise. You can of course offset the cost by selling off your older equipement for whatever the market will bear.

So for foreseeable future I'll be continuing with DSMX untill they are no longer available then do my research into what is the greatest and latest. JR is now using FHSS interestingly.


Geek a thon over.