Hi all, in case anyone bothered to wonder where I wuz, you may know I was making a master for a 1/6th scale model kit of a Vincent Black Shadow 'bike. I sent the engine casings to Griffin Moulds in the Midlands and they utterly destroyed the masters, sending me back a back of fragments! No phone call, no e-mail, no note in the late-delivered (DPD) parcel. Now they have the cheek to invoice me! So I have been busy catching up with other stuff kept waiting for a while, sucvh as a 1/43rd scale brass master of a Triumph Model H 1915 'bike and a 1/32nd scale Vanwall Transporter. So I haven't even looked a t a model boat since the weather turned. And likely shan't much before May. Everyone have a nice Christmas.

Cheers,
Martin

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Doug, the Flysky comes pre-bound at the factory. Civilised! I have tried it with an old servo and it worked a treat. Haven't got anything done on the ESC yet. I'll try again at the weekend.

Cheers,
Martin

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Thanks, Doug,
I take it that throttle down would mean throttle back with a pistol set like the Flysky? Also, it's a Lipo I want to tell it about. I went nuts and bought one as it's a brushless motor.
So as soon as I hear a beep I yank back on the throttle trigger? Let's hope it doesn't just beep continuously like it did before.

Foghorn? I had no idea it was there.

Norn Airish Snookrr soo et ezz. Don't do sports.

Cheers,
Martin

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Doug, the instructions tell me to do what you guys have as to order of switching on, but the beep bit doesn't actually explain what to do which is what I meant by what it means.

Foghorn? What foghorn? Sullivan, Trump?

Martin

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Doug, just managed to download the PDF. I hadn't noticed the download sign and it just put up a bigger PDF picture. BUT...what the hell all that stuff means I have no idea. 1 Beep, 2 Beeps, 3 beeps. My motor just beeped continually. And no, I didn't know the Tx had to go on first either. it's been a LONG time since I played with RC gear of any sort and that was much simpler than all this modern stuff.
I've put it all away now, so I'll have another go during the week and see if I can get any sense from it.
I can't ask any locals as they're all old tuggers with basic electricks.

Cheers,
Martin

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Doug, I did briefly connect both Rx battery and ESC to the Rx. Does that mean I've done summat bad?

Also the pdf doesn't open. How can I do that?

Cheers,
Martin

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Here's a pic of the set-up, with the ESC central. Rx is in a little styrene box I made for it.
Shows the motor too on its mount.

Martin

And yes I got the heat shrink on the battery leads the wrong way round, but had so much trouble soldering the bloody wires to that stupid t shaped plug I couldn't be arsed to change em over!

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If the ESC has a BEC in it, do I have to forget the Rx pack of Nimhs? The ebay listing of something very similar says it has a BEC. Would it be better to just use the Nimhs, in which case how do I treat the ESC Rx wiring? just ignore it?

Martin

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Hi Doug, as you can probably guess, I have as much chance of programming an ESC as flying with my own wings to Munich! The ESC didn't come with any instructions. I didn't know they needed them! More to the point, how the Hell can a motor beep? Where's the beeping kit in a motor with one moving part?
So, now what. it's a Flysky pistol grip 3 channel (third is a switch) set of Tx and pre bound Rx. The ESC ? Gawd knows, a flat thing inside a big yellow heat shrink casing. I got it from China recently. All I can do is take a picture of it with my nice new camera tomorrow. Does it matter which way round those three wires go on the motor?

I'll post pictures tomorrow.

Thanks,
Martin

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Hello all, since I keep the weekend for me I thought I'd try hooking up all the lecktrickery for my brushless motor. It's one of they outrunning tiddlers. I have a 3S LiPo which is firing on all cylinders at 3.79 volts per. I plug it in to the ESC, some Chinese one I got recently. I soldered wires to a T type plug that fits the Overlander battery pack. I'd already soldered the 2mm connectors to the other end of the ESC wires and protected them with heat shrink. Plugged tested (6.2 volts) Nimhs into Rx and it starts flashing, then plugged ESC into a channel and the motor, yes , the MOTOR starts beeping! How the hell can that happen? I plug the battery in and the motor beeps even quicker! What on earth is happening? Needless to say, no rotation, buzzing, whistling, just beeps from a motor, clear as you like!
Please help. I am already teetering on the edge of getting rid of all my working stuff as it takes up space and is such a damned faff! But what I have, I would like to work. Just long enough to prove it all.

Martin

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Unless you can get something second hand, the only new small lathe worth a toss is the Peatol (Taig) from Harborne in Brum. Cheap, but very well made. You have to buy the tailstock, oddly, but it's still very inexpensive. I have had mine for over 30 years and it is as good as new. My son got one s/h off ebay with every attachment, on a base, with a book and it was £200.

Martin

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Thanks, onetenor. I put a coat of said varnish on today and the repairs almost disappeared. Very pleased. The rest of the day was visitors, so not much done.

Martin

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I did indeed use an abrasive polish on the cream paint, but as it was a very severe crack or two all along the hull, I injected resin in the crack and clamped it up as far as possible, then Milliputted in to fair it. This was between two strips of tape to prevent the spread of epoxy or Milli further than necessary. I managed to match the cream more or less and once I've put a coat of nice amber spar varnish on it'll look like the original when heeled and won't show at all when on display.

Martin

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Doug, I think if I passed on your suggestion he'd seek you out and attack you!

Martin

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Useful to know about Vanish. it certainly worked on my Star yacht sails. Fortunately the sails on the Ailsa yacht are lovely anyway, just some new rigging cord required.
I would say the sails were the same as bed sheets.

I used some white spirit to clean the deck on the Ailsa. Most of the dirt being handling muck. Then I waxed it with 3M wax...twice. it's wonderful stuff which I bought for our historic narrowboat's new paintwork. it was a wooden boat and when I replaced the cabins and had painted them with Tra-mar Coatings hand made enamel paint, I waxed them with 3M's wax and they went another 3 winters before I sold the boat, with the rain still rolling off in beads.

The Ailsa is now waiting for some spar varnish over the repair's creamish paint. I couldn't match it perfectly, but I didn't want to repaint the whole hull. All the repairs are under the waterline so it shouldn't show.

The Star...I never heard of them using aluminium for masts. How would they have kept the rigging eyes in place?

Martin

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If they are enamels like Plastikote used to be, yes, but as far as I know, Plastikote changed formulae to acrylic, which, if their brush pots were anything to go by are complete crap. I had one that reacted with itself! I complained bitterly to them and they sent me every pot of enamel they had left in the office!

Martin

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Thanks, Richard, sorry missed this post. I will let my chum know. Currently the basement where he does his models is flooded thanks to the water company's broken main!

Martin

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I thought a minidrill had gone west on me, but then found the motor was OK, so , with items from a discarded fax machine I made a small mill/drill attachment for the vertical slide of my modelmakers' lathe. it had made an awful lot of wheels since! I use it to mill out spokes and drill holes on things like BRM and Dunlop wheels and it did all the series of British Touring Cars models I made for the teams back in the Cavalier/Mondeo days, when you could tell what they were and there were no stinking grunty oil burners.

Martin

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No, not dioramas, Doug. Dioramas use forced (false?) perspective and therefore must be viewed from one point. I made a diorama of Shelseley Walsh hillclimb to show slot car models. it was quite effective.
This is all new for me and I am gathering engine models (I hope) from various hot rod sources. it will save me time on building these. I have a Merlin coming from Holland and a few others from contacts.
First model in this series will be Hornet II, the wonderful gar Wood Speedster which had an all aluminium deck and fin added and its Packard replaced by a Rolls-Royce Meteor, which was just a Merlin sans blower. interestingly, the Rover Meteorite was a V8 version of the meteor and fitted in pairs in the Crash Tender.

Martin

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Gents, I wanted the soft floppy silicon covered wires, so Halfords wouldn't do.
Doug, the odd thing is that when I worked in Germany as a clay modeller, I was often given hard modelling jobs (not clay) which usually meant making complex little mechanisms. So much so that I became known as Mechanical Martin or just "Mekanist".
Yet back home fitting all the worky bits to a model boat or even a slot car/model railway loco is the bit I hate! Don't know why, except maybe in the boats/slotcars/locos there is a certain way of doing it which I find a drudge and in the clay studios there was always an element of invention required. indeed I am the nominated inventor on a VW patent!
But, I have run out of space for storage boxes and can only rarely get to a decent pond to run anything, so I am going over to static models only now. 1/24th scale models of mahogany hot rods (woodies), some in scenic set-pieces, maybe. But I'll finish the models I have on the go first.

Martin

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You really need to be self reliant on these simpler tasks, rather than use a local "expert". There is no such thing as an expert on drilling keels! And if he suggests he is...avoid him!

Martin

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I couldn't find a way of ordering different colours, but Paypal playing up messed it all up for us anyway. I'm not a patient man so said to my wife, "sod em , get it from ebay"
It'll turn up when it wants to. I don't do much on boats in the Winter, but I must remember to cycle my batteries somehow or they'll die.
I hate working models!

Martin

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Thanks, guys. Tried Component shop but their PayPal wouldn't let us in so we went back to ebay and found em under 4mm silicon cable. Slow boat job, but I'm not desperate. A nice blue to which I'll add red and black heat shrink I already have, but I'll keep those links, cheers,
Martin

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Hi all, I might have motors, ESCs RC gear, even LiPos and Nimh packs, but I ain't got the heavyish wire to hook it all up and although I had a gander on ebay, all I could find was made up cables, with invariably the wrong plugs on the ends, but I have bullets male and female coming out of my earoles, so just need....wire! Any idea who flogs the odd metre of the stuff that can be soldered into bullets?

Martin

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Your excuse to get the Mrs. involved, Steve. Get a dolls' house doll and redress him/her. 1/12th is a pain for non period figures. 1/8th ain't much better. I've redressed some 1/16th figures with Milliput to make four crew for my Crash Tender, but it took a while and you still need a base figure to save time.

Martin

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Thanks, Doug. Peeing down here, so I epoxied the cracks in my lovely old just post War Ailsa yacht indoors and put it in the heat of the boiler room! We'll see how that goes tomorrow. Grotty old day all round now. Curl up weather!

Cheers,
Martin

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Morning, Doug. What a gent and a Boy Scout you are, sir. This is all new to me. My old video camera was just that, a video camera as of old. Perfectly fine till the batteries died and then I could only use it on the power pack indoors. it looked like a cine camera!

This is a Praktika Luxmedia WP240. it says it has HD video, 720p on the box lid, whatever that means!

Thanks for any help, old chum.

Martin

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Hi, thanks. No idea what Mbps are or how to change them from one to another, but 40 minutes is plenty to just record bits of boats afloat. I've often wondered about a youtube channel showing people how to make stuff. My 11 year old grandson lectured me on it yesterday! "You'll need a decent camera with a tripod, Grandad", he said knowledgeably, "and a mike and you need a nickname and an intro and an Outro" He wasn't impressed when I joked that that was a track on a Genesis album.


Cheers,
Martin

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Hi, I have a new camera thanks to my dear bride and it takes video. What it doesn't say in the book is how long a video one can take. It has a micro 8 GB card, so how long could I video something? Anyone know?

Martin

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No, I think Smith's son flogs the plans on ebay, so won't be on the free stuff sites. I was more interested in anyone who has one piping up.

Martin

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