What a brave man Pete Smoothy is? How would you fancy sitting by the phone three nights a week waiting for someone to call with a question about modelling. Suppose no-one calls for an hour or so. You decide to get on with that new model and - just as you have mixed up a large batch of 5 minute epoxy - the phone rings!
The law of averages decrees that a significant proportion of the queries will be silly ones, which is hardly good for anyones temper. Being somewhat awkward and undiplomatic myself - not to mention bloody-minded - I would be very tempted to give equally silly answers. In fact, even the sensible questions would get facetious answers at times.
A glance at some of the recent 'Hotline' columns shows just how diplomatic Pete can be. Fancy someone wanting to put a glow motor in a 'Black Magic'. Perhaps I had better leave it at that, before I have some offended readers on my tail.
Ok, so Pete is only available for a couple of hours each evening. I would be willing to bet that he has been rung up with only one minute to go and then kept talking for hours. No doubt the cynical among you will say "Ah yes, but it helps him to write his column." Well, I make it 26 hours per month that he sits by the phone and at ASP rates that makes it about two quid an hour. Get a cleaning job Pete, it will pay better.
A little while ago, I bored you with my thoughts on the subject of joining wing halves and how many modellers drastically over-engineer the joint with tons of heavy, non-bio-degradable, 'reinforcement'.
The subject reared its head again from a different direction when I recently examined a re-kitted version of an old British classic. This has elliptical wings with tip dihedral - polyhedral to those with long memories (although it can also be built with straight dihedral if required). Obviously, the original designer knew his stuff since the centre dihedral joint utilised butt joins with balsa dihedral braces which served merely to hold the parts in the correct location until the glue set.
A similar system was used on the outer breaks at the leading and trailing edge locations. So far so good, but, the instructions for the new kit suggested that the braces should be replaced with ply if radio gear was fitted! Perhaps that seems like a wise suggestion to you, but just consider. The original wing was all balsa and formed a homogenous structure which could bend evenly along its length and distribute the load. With ply braces we now have inflexible portions with a major weakness where they end!
If you are unsure whether the original construction is capable of withstanding your hamfisted operation of the elevator (not part of the original design) a much better solution would be to use spruce spars. They could be braced with spruce, or even ply, but do retain those balsa braces at the leading and trailing edges.
Incidentally, the manufacturer of the new kit states that you cannot use his parts to build a model off the old plan. Surprise, surprise.
It is nice to see that this magazine now has a letters column and I for one look forward to some good honest controversy such as we used to see in 'Aeromodeller'. Come back LSARA, all is forgiven.
It seems that the fight has already started, in fact. A letter in the December issue from the CD of the Nationals helicopter event objected to the fact that Radio Modellers report of the event came from a party who was not present at the event.
Being keenly interested in authenticated examples of clairvoyance, I hastened to check the name of the reporter concerned. Ah, but what's this - the reporter was not named. Perhaps we have attributed second sight to the wrong person.
The letter closed with a comment about the true facts becoming clear when the reporter reads the oppositions report of the event. Well, I read the RCM&E report and it said virtually the same thing. OK, scrub the bit about second sight!
Another letter in the same issue came from non other than Jim Sprigg, immortalised in the Goon shows. Nice to see you are still around Jim!
On the subject of the letters column I was perplexed by one from the dreaded Martin Dilly being rather unkind to our old friend Peter Chinn's article about a recent readers survey by an American magazine. It seems that Martin had assumed that Peter was attempting to correlate modelling interests with occupations. Surely it was the American magazine that was attempting to do this, not Peter!
As the magazine concerned was an all R/C publication, I would have thought that its readers could hardly be considered to be a relevant cross-section of aeromodelling as a whole. The American scene is much more active in non-R/C events than in this country - mainly, I suspect, because it is a family activity. Even in the US of A very few juniors can afford to become heavily involved in R/C flying, and they probably don't have the social pressures that we do.
Come now Martin, you must admit that in some circles it would take a very brave company director to admit that he flies elastic powered toy aeroplanes or motorised yo-yo's. Incidentally, some of us still fly F/F, C/L and R/C.
Martins other point about the number of all R/C magazines in this country and that this is a blinkered approach is rather lost on me - does he want to see R/C in Aeromodeller? In any case the point is rather wasted by not emphasising that in the USA they have one all R/C magazine and four aeromodelling publications. Surely this emphasises my point.
Far from accusing others of being blinkered it would appear that Martin is guilty of the same fault since he admits to flying only F/F. Perhaps he could persuade some well-heeled youngster to part with his radio equipment, or control lines - then they would both benefit!